























Glass 

Book 









































MOBY-DICK 

OR 

THE WHITE WHALE 









MOBY-DICK 


OR 


THE WHITE WHALE 


( 

BY 

HERMAN MELVILLE 

AUTHOR OF 

“TYPEE,” “OMOO,” “WHITE JACKET,” ETC. 







OX^ 

NEW YORK 

UNITED STATES BOOK COMPANY 


5 and 7 East Sixteenth Street 


Chicago : 266 & 268 Wabash Avenue. 



MOBY DICK. 


CHAPTER I. 

LOOMINGS. 

Call me Ishmael. Some years ago — never mind how long 
precisely — having little or no money in my purse, and noth- 
ing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would 
sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It 
is a way I have of driving off the spleen, and regulating the 
circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about 
the mouth ; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in 
my soul ; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing be- 
fore coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every 
funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get 
Such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral 
principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the 
street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off — then, 
I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This 
is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical 
flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword ; I quietly take 
to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they 
but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or 
other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the 
ocean with me. 

There now is your insular city of the Manhattoes, belted 
round by wharves as Indian isles by coral reefs — commerce 
surrounds it with her surf. Right and left, the streets take 
you waterward. Its extreme down-town is the battery, 
where that noble mole is washed, by waves, and cooled by 
breezes, which a few hours previous were out of sight of 
land. Look at the crowds of water-gazers there. 

Circumambulate the city of a dreamy Sabbath afternoon. 
Go from Corlears Hook to Coenties Slip, and from thence, 
by Whitehall, northward. What do you see ? — Posted like 


8 


MOBY DICK. 


silent sentinels all around the town, stand thousands upon 
thousands of mortal men fixed in ocean reveries. Some 
leaning against the spiles ; some seated upon the pier-heads ; 
some looking over the bulwarks of ships from China ; some 
high aloft in the rigging, as if striving to get a still better 
seaward peep. But these are all landsmen ; of week days 
pent up in lath and plaster — tied to counters, nailed to 
benches, clinched to desks. How then is this ? Are the 
green fields gone ? What do they here ? 

But look ! here come more crowds, pacing straight for the 
water, and seemingly bound for a dive. Strange ! Noth- 
ing will content them but the extremest limit of the land ; 
loitering under the shady lee of yonder warehouses will not 
suffice. No. They must get just as nigh the water as they 
possibly can without falling in. And there they stand — 
miles of them — leagues. Inlanders all, they come from lanes 
and alleys, streets and avenues — north, east, south, and west. 
Yet here they all unite. Tell me, does the magnetic virtue 
of the needles of the compasses of all those ships attract 
them thither ? 

Once more. Say, you are in the country ; in some high 
land of lakes. Take almost any path you please, and ten 
to one it carries you down in a dale, and leaves you there 
by a pool in the stream. There is magic in it. Let the 
most absent-minded of men be plunged in his deepest rev- 
eries — stand that man on his legs, set his feet a-going, and 
he will infallibly lead you to water, if water there be in all 
that region. Should you ever be athirst in the great Amer- 
ican desert, try this experiment, if your caravan happen to 
be supplied with a metaphysical professor. Yes, as every 
one knows, meditation and water are wedded forever. 

But here is an artist. He desires to paint you the dream- 
iest, shadiest, quietest, most enchanting bit of romantic 
landscape in all the valley of the Saco. What is the chief 
element he employs ? There stand his trees, each with a 
hollow trunk, as if a hermit and a crucifix were within ; and 
here sleeps his meadow, and there sleep his cattle ; and up 
from yonder cottage goes a sleepy smoke. Deep into dis- 
tant woodlands winds a mazy way, reaching to overlapping 
spurs of mountains bathed in their hill-side blue. But 
though the picture lies thus tranced, and though this pine- 
tree shakes down its sighs like leaves upon this shepherd’s 
head, yet all were vain, unless the shepherd’s eye were, fixed 
upon the magic stream before him. Go visit the Prairies in 


MOBY DICK . 


9 


June, when for scores on scores of miles you wade knee- 
deep among Tiger-lilies — what is the one charm wanting ? 
— Water — there is not a drop of water there! Were Nia- 
gara hut a cataract of sand, would you travel your thousand 
miles to see it ? Why did the poor poet of Tennessee, upon 
suddenly receiving two handfuls of silver, deliberate whether 
to buy him a coat, which he sadly needed, or invest his 
money in a pedestrian trip to Rockaway Beach ? Why is 
almost every robust healthy boy with a robust healthy soul 
in him, at some time or other crazy to go to sea? Why 
upon your first voyage as a passenger, did you yourself feel 
such a mystical vibration, when first told that you and your 
ship were now out of sight of land. Why did the old Per- 
sians hold the sea holy ? Why did the Greets give it a sep- 
arate deity, and own brother of Jove ? Surely all this is 
not without meaning. And still deeper the meaning of 
that story of Narcissus, who because he could not grasp 
the tormenting, mild image he saw in the fountain, plunged 
into it and was drowned. But that same image, we our- 
selves see in all rivers and oceans. It is the image of the 
ungraspable phantom of life ; and this is the key to it 
all. 

Now, when I say that I am in the habit of going to sea 
whenever I begin to grow hazy about the eyes, and begin 
to be over conscious of my lungs, I do not mean to have it 
inferred that I ever go to sea as a passenger. For to go 
as a passenger you must needs have a purse, and a purse is 
but a rag unless you have something in it. Besides, pas- 
sengers get sea-sick — grow quarrelsome — don’t sleep of 
nights — do not enjoy themselves much, as a general thing ; — 
no, I never go as a passenger ; nor, though I am something 
of a salt, do I ever go to sea as a Commodore, or a Captain, 
or a cook. I abandon the glory and distinction of such 
offices to those who like them. For my part, I abominate 
all honourable respectable toils, trials, and tribulations of 
every kind whatsoever. It is quite as much as I can do to 
take care of myself, without taking care of ships, barques, 
brigs, schooners, and what not. And as for going as 
cook, — though I confess there is considerable glory in 
that, a cook being a sort of officer on ship-board — yet, 
somehow^ I never fancied broiling fowls ; — though once 
broiled, judiciously buttered, and judgmatically salted and 
peppered, there is no one who will speak more respect- 
fully, not to say reverentially, of a broiled fowl than I 


10 


MOBY DICK . 


will. It is out of the idolatrous dotings of the old Egyp- 
tians upon broiled ibis and roasted river horse, that you see 
the mummies of those creatures in their huge bake-houses 
the pyramids. 

No, when I go to sea, I go as a simple sailor, right before 
the mast, plumb down into the forecastle, aloft there to the 
royal mast-head. True, they rather order me about some, 
and make me jump from spar to spar, like a grasshopper in 
a May meadow. And at first, this sort of thing is unpleas- 
ant enough. It touches one’s sense of honour, particularly 
if you come of an old established family in the land, the Van 
Rensselaers, or Randolphs, or Hardicanutes. And more 
than all, if just previous to putting your hand into the tar- 
pot, you have been lording it as a country schoolmaster, 
making the tallest boys stand in awe of you. The tran- 
sition is a keen one, I assure you, from a schoolmaster to a 
sailor, and requires a strong decoction of Seneca and the 
Stoics to enable you to grin and bear it. But even this wears 
off in time. 

What of it, if some old hunks of a sea-captain orders me 
to get a broom and sweep down the decks ? What does that 
indignity amount to, weighed, I mean, in the scales of the 
New Testament? Do you think the archangel Gabriel 
thinks anything the less of me, because I promptly and re- 
spectfully obey that old hunks in that particular instance ? 
Who ain’t a slave ? Tell me that. W ell, then, however the 
old sea-captains may order me about — however they may 
thump and punch me about, I have the satisfaction of know- 
ing that it is all right : that everybody else is one way or 
other served in much the same way — either in a physical 
or metaphysical point of view, that is ; and so the universal 
thump is passed round, and all hands should rub each other’s 
shoulder-blades, and be content. 

Again, I always go to sea as a sailor, because they make 
a point of paying me for my trouble, whereas they never 
pay passengers a single penny that I ever heard of. On 
the contrary, passengers themselves must pay. And there 
is all the difference in the world between paying and being 
paid. The act of paying is perhaps the most uncomforta- 
ble infliction that the two orchard thieves entailed upon us. 
But being paid , — what will compare with it ? The urbane 
activity with which a man receives money is really mar- 
vellous, considering that we so earnestly believe money to 
be the root of all earthly ills, and that on no account can a 


MOBY DICK. 


11 


monied man enter heaven. Ah ! how cheerfully we con- 
sign ourselves to perdition ! 

Finally, I always go to sea as a sailor, because of the 
.wholesome exercise and pure air of the forecastle deck. 
For as in this world, head winds are far more prevalent 
than winds from astern (that is, if you never violate the 
Pythagorean maxim), so for the most part the Commodore 
on the quarter-deck gets his atmosphere at second-hand 
from the sailors on the forecastle. He thinks he breathes 
it first ; but not so. In much the same way do the com- 
monalty lead their leaders in many other things, at the 
same time that the leaders little suspect it. But wherefore 
it was that after having repeatedly smelt the sea as a mer- 
chant sailor, I should now take it into my head to go on a 
whaling voyage ; this the invisible police officer of the 
Fates, who has the constant surveillance of me, and secretly 
dogs me, and influences me in some unaccountable way — 
he can better answer than anyone else. And, doubtless, 
my going on this whaling voyage, formed part of the grand 
programme of Providence that was drawn up a long time 
ago. It came in as a sort of brief interlude and solo be- 
tween more extensive performances. I take it that this 
part of the bill must have run something like this : 

“ Grand Contested Election for the Presidency of the United States , 
44 WHALING VOYAGE BY OXE ISHMAEL. 

44 BLOODY BATTLE IX AFFGHANISTAN.” 

Though I cannot tell why it was exactly that those stage 
managers, the Fates, put me down for this shabby part of 
a whaling voyage, when others were set down for magnifi- 
cent parts in high tragedies, and short and easy parts in 
genteel comedies, and jolly parts in farces — though I can- 
not tell why this was exactly ; yet, now that I recall all 
the circumstances, I think I can see a little into the springs 
and motives which being cunningly presented to me under 
various disguises, induced me to set about performing the 
part I did, besides cajoling me into the delusion that it was 
a choice resulting from my own unbiased freewill and dis- 
criminating judgment. 

Chief among these motives was the overwhelming idea 
of the great whale himself. Such a portentous and mys- 
terious monster roused all my curiosity. Then the wild and 


12 


MOBY DICK. 


distant seas where he rolled his island bulk ; the undeliv- 
erable, nameless perils of the whale ; these, with all the 
attending marvels of a thousand Patagonian sights and 
sounds, helped to sway me to my wish. With other men, 
perhaps, such things would not have been inducements ; 
but as for me, I am tormented with an everlasting itch for 
things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on 
barbarous coasts. Not ignoring what is good, I am quick 
to perceive a horror, and could still be social with it— - 
would they let me — since it is but well to be on friendly 
terms with all the inmates of the place one lodges in. 

By reason of these things, then, the whaling voyage was 
welcome ; the great flood-gates of the w r onder- world swung 
open, and in the wild conceits that swayed me to my pur- 
pose, two and two there floated into my inmost soul, end- 
less processions of the whale, and, mid most of them all, 
one grand hooded phantom, like a snow hill in the air. 


CHAPTER II. 

THE CARPE T-B A O. 

I stuffed a shirt or two into my old carpet-bag, tucked 
it under my arm, and started for Cape Horn and the Pa- 
cific. Quitting the good city of old Manhatto, I duly arrived 
in New Bedford. It was on a Saturday night in December. 
Much was I disappointed upon learning that the little packet 
for Nantucket had already sailed, and that no way of reach- 
ing that place would offer, till the following Monday. 

As most young candidates for the pains and penalties of 
wdialing stop at this same New Bedford, thence to embark on 
their voyage, it may as well be related that I, for one, had 
no idea of so doing. For my mind was made up to sail in no 
other than a Nantucket craft, because there was a fine boister- 
ous something about everything connected with that famous 
old island, which amazingly pleased me. Besides though 
New Bedford has of late been gradually monopolising the 
business of w T haling, and though in this matter poor old 
Nantucket is now much behind her, yet Nantucket was hex- 
great original — the Tyre of this Carthage ; — the place where 


MOBY DICE. 


13 


the first dead American whale was stranded. Where else 
but from Nantucket did those aboriginal whalemen, the Red- 
Men, first sally out in canoes to give chase to the Leviathan ? 
And where but from Nantucket, too, did that first adven- 
turous little sloop put forth, partly laden with imported 
cobble-stones — so goes the story — to throw at the whales, 
in order to discover when they were nigh enough to risk a 
harpoon from the bowsprit ? 

Now having a night, a day, and still another night, follow- 
ing before me in New Bedford, ere I could embark for my 
destined port, it became a matter of concernment where I 
was to eat and sleep meanwhile. It was a very dubious- 
looking, nay, a very dark and dismal night, bitingly cold 
and cheerless. I knew no one in the place. With anxious 
grapnels I had sounded my pocket, and only brought up a 
few pieces of silver, — So, wherever you go, Ishmael, said I, 
to myself as I stood in the middle of a dreary street shoul- 
dering my bag, and comparing the gloom towards the north 
with the darkness towards the south — wherever in your 
wisdom you may conclude to lodge for the night, my dear 
Ishmael, be sure to inquire the price, and don’t be too partic- 
ular. 

With halting steps I paced the streets, and passed the 
sign of “ The Crossed Harpoons ” — but it looked too expen- 
sive and jolly there. Further on, from the bright red win- 
dows of the “ Sword-Fish Inn,” there came such fervent 
rays, that it seemed to have melted the packed snow and ice 
from before the house, for everywhere else the congealed 
frost lay ten inches thick in a hard, asphaltic pavement, — 
rather weary for me, when I struck my foot against the 
flinty projections, because from hard, remorseless service 
the soles of my boots were in a most miserable plight. Too 
expensive and jolly, again thought I, pausing one moment 
to watch the broad glare in the street, and hear the sounds 
of the tinkling glasses within. But go on, Ishmael, said I 
at last ; don’t you hear ? get away from before the door ; 
your patched boots are stopping the way. So on I went. 
I now by instinct followed the streets that took me water- 
ward, for there, doubtless, were the cheapest, if not the 
cheeriest inns. 

Such dreary streets ! blocks of blackness, not houses, on 
either hand, and here and there a candle, like a candle 
moving about in a tomb. At this hour of the night, of the 
last day of the week, that quarter of the town proved all 


14 


MOBY DICK. 


but deserted. But presently I came to a smoky light 
proceeding from a low, wide building, the door of which 
stood invitingly open. It had a careless look, as if it were 
meant for the uses of the public ; so, entering, the first 
thing I did was to stumble over an ashbox in the porch. 
Ha ! thought I, ha, as the flying particles almost choked 
me, are these ashes from that destroyed city, Gomorrah? 
But “ The Crossed Harpoons,” and “ The Sword-Fish ? ” — 
this, then, must needs be the sign of “The Trap.” How- 
ever, I picked myself up and hearing a loud voice within, 
pushed on and opened a second, interior door. 

It seemed the great Black Parliament sitting in Tophet. 
A hundred black faces turned round in their rows to peer ; 
and beyond, a black Angel of Doom was beating a book in 
a pulpit. It was a negro church ; and the preacher’s text 
was about the blackness of darkness, and the weeping and 
wailing and teeth-gnashing there. Ha, Ishmael, muttered 
I, backing out, Wretched entertainment at the sign of 
“ The Trap ! ” 

Moving on, I at last came to a dim sort of light not far 
from the docks, and heard a forlorn creaking in the air ; 
and looking up, saw a swinging sign over the door with a 
white painting upon it, faintly representing a tall straight 
jet of misty spray, and these words underneath — “The 
Spouter-Inn : — Peter Coffin.” 

Coffin? — Spouter? — Rather ominous in that particular 
connection, thought I. But it is a common name in Nan- 
tucket, they say, and I suppose this Peter here is an 
emigrant from there. As the light looked so dim, and the 
place, for the time, looked quiet enough, and the dilapidated 
little wooden house itself looked as if it might have been 
carted here from the ruins of some burnt district, and as 
the swinging sign had a poverty-stricken sort of creak to 
it, I thought that here was the very spot for cheap lodg- 
ings, and the best of pea coffee. 

It was a queer sort of place— a gable-ended old house, 
one side palsied as it were, and leaning over sadly. It 
stood on a sharp bleak corner, where that tempestuous 
wind Euroclydon kept up a worse howling than ever it did 
about poor Paul’s tossed craft. Euroclydon, nevertheless, 
is a mighty pleasant zephyr to any one in-doors, with his 
feet on the hob quietly toasting for bed. “ In judging of 
that tempestuous wind called Euroclydon,” says an old 
writer — of whose works I possess the only copy extant 


MOB Y DICK. 


15 


“ it maketh a marvellous difference, whether thou lookest 
out at it from a glass window where the frost is all on the 
outside, or whether thou observest it from that sashless 
window, where the frost is on both sides, and of which the 
wight Death is the only glazier.” True enough, thought I, 
as this passage occurred to my mind — old black-letter, 
thou reasonest well. Y es, these eyes are windows, and this 
body of mine is the house. What a pity they didn’t stop 
up the chinks and the crannies though, and thrust in a little 
lint here and there. But it’s too late to make any improve- 
ments now. The universe is finished ; the copestone is on, 
and the chips were carted off a million years ago. Poor 
Lazarus there, chattering his teeth against the curbstone 
for his pillow, and shaking off his tatters with his shiver- 
ings, he might plug up both ears with rags, and put a corn- 
cob into his mouth, and yet that would not keep out the 
tempestuous Euroclydon. Euroclydon ! says old Dives, in 
his red silken wrapper — (he had a redder one afterwards) 
pooh, pooh ! What a fine frosty night ; how Orion glitters ; 
what northern lights! Let them talk of their oriental 
summer climes of everlasting conservatories ; give me the 
privilege of making my own summer with my own coals. 

But what thinks Lazarus ? Can he warm his blue hands 
by holding them up to the grand northern lights ? Would 
not Lazarus rather be in Sumatra than here? Would he 
not far rather lay him down lengthwise along the line of 
the equator ; yea, ye gods ! go down to the fiery pit itself, in 
order to keep out this frost ? 

Now, that Lazarus should lie stranded there on the curb- 
stone before the door of Dives, this is more wonderful than 
that an iceberg should be moored to one of the Moluccas. 
Yet Dives himself, he too lives like a Czar in an ice palace 
made of frozen sighs, and being a president of a temperance 
society, he only drinks the tepid tears of orphans. 

But no more of this blubbering now, we are going a- 
whaling, and there is plenty of that yet to come. Let us 
scrape the ice from our frosted feet, and see what sort of 
a place this “ Spouter ” may be. 


16 


MOBY DICK • 


CHAPTER TIL 

THE SPOUTER-INN. 

Entering that gable-ended S pouter-inn, you found your- 
self in a wide, low, straggling entry with old-fashioned 
wainscots, reminding one of the bulwarks of some con- 
demned old craft. On one side hung a very large oil-paint- 
ing so thoroughly besmoked, and every way defaced, that 
in the unequal cross-lights by which you viewed it, it was 
only by diligent study and a series of systematic visits to it, 
and careful inquiry of the neighbors, that you could any 
way arrive at an understanding of its purpose. Such unac- 
countable masses of shades and shadows, that at first you 
almost thought some ambitious young artist, in the time of 
the Xew England hags, had endeavoured to delineate chaos 
bewitched. But by dint of much and earnest contemplation, 
and oft repeated ponderings, and especially by throwing open 
the little window towards the back of the entry, you at 
last come to the conclusion that such an idea, however wild, 
might not be altogether unwarranted. 

But what most puzzled and confounded you was a long, 
limber, portentous, black mass of something hovering in the 
centre of the picture over three blue, dim, perpendicular 
lines floating in a nameless yeast. A boggy, soggy, squitchy 
picture truly, enough to drive a nervous man distracted. 
Yet was there a sort of indefinite, half-attained, unimagi- 
nable sublimity about it that fairly froze you to it, till you 
involuntarily took an oath with yourself to find out what 
that marvellous painting meant. Ever and anon a bright, 
but, alas ! deceptive idea would dart you through. — It’s the 
Black Sea in a midnight gale. — It’s the unnatural combat 
of the four primal elements. — It’s a blasted heath. — It’s a 
Hyperborean winter scene. — It’s the breaking-up of the ice- 
bound stream of Time. But at last all these fancies yielded 
to that one portentous something in the picture’s midst. 
That once found out, and all the rest were plain. But 3 tort, 
does it not bear a faint resemblance to a gigantic fish ? even 
the great leviathan himself ? 


MOB Y DICK. 


17 


In fact, the artist’s design seemed this : a final theory of 
my own, partly Dased upon the aggregated opinions of many 
aged persons with whom I conversed upon the subject. The 
picture represents a Cape-Horner in a great hurricane ; the 
half-foundered ship weltering there with its three dismantled 
masts alone visible ; and an exasperated whale, purposing 
to spring clean over the craft, is in the enormous act of im- 
paling himself upon the three mast-heads. 

The opposite wall of this entry was hung all over with a 
heathenish array of monstrous clubs and spears. Some 
were thickly set with glittering teeth resembling ivory 
saws ; others were tufted with knots of human hair ; and 
one was sickle- shaped, with a vast handle sweeping round 
like the segment made in the new-mown grass by a long- 
armed mower. You shuddered as you gazed, and wondered 
what monstrous cannibal and savage could ever have gone 
a death-harvesting with such a hacking, horrifying imple- 
ment. Mixed with these were rusty old whaling lances and 
harpoons all broken and deformed. Some were storied 
weapons. With this once long lance, now wildly elbowed, 
fifty years ago did Nathan Swain kill fifteen whales between 
a sunrise and a sunset. And that harpoon — so like a cork- 
screw now — was flung in Javan seas, and run away with by 
a whale, years afterwards slain off the Cape of Blanco. The 
original iron entered nigh the tail, and, like a restless needle 
sojourning in the body of a man, travelled full forty feet, 
and at last was found imbedded in the hump. 

Crossing this dusky entry, and on through yon low- 
arched way — cut through what in old times must have been 
a great central chimney with fireplaces all round — you 
enter the public room. A still duskier place is this, with 
such low ponderous beams above, and such old wrinkled 
planks beneath, that you would almost fancy you trod 
some old craft’s cockpits, especially of such a howling 
night, when this corner-anchored old ark rocked so furi- 
ously. On one side stood a long, low, shelf-like table cov- 
ered with cracked glass-cases, filled with dusty rarities 
gathered from this wide world’s remotest nooks. Project- 
ing from the further angle of the room stands a dark-looking 
,4«n- — the bar — a rude attempt at a right whale’s head. Be 
that how it may, there stands the vast arched bone of the 
whale’s jaw, so wide, a coach might almost drive beneath 
it. Within are shabby shelves, ranged round with old de- 
canters, bottles, flasks ; and in those jaws of swift destruc- 

2 


18 


MOBY DICK . 


tion, like another cursed Jonah (by which name indeed 
they called him), bustles a little withered old man, who, 
for their money, dearly sells the sailors deliriums and death. 

Abominable are the tumblers into which he pours his 
poison. Though true cylinders without — within, the vil- 
lainous green goggling glasses deceitfully tapered down- 
wards to a cheating bottom. Parallel meridians rudely 
pecked into the glass, surround these footpads’ goblets. 
Fill to this mark, and your charge is but a penny ; to this 
a penny more ; and so on to the full glass — the Cape Horn 
measure, which you may gulp down for a shilling. 

Upon entering the place I found a number of young sea- 
men gathered about a table, examining by a dim light 
divers specimens of skrimshander. I sought the landlord, 
and telling him I desired to be accommodated with a room, 
received for answer that his house was full — not a bed un- 
occupied. “ But avast,” he added, tapping his forehead, 
“you haint no objections to sharing a harpooner’s blanket, 
have ye ? I s’pose you are goin’ a- whalin’, so you’d better 
get used to that sort of thing.” 

1 told him that I never liked to sleep two in a bed ; that 
if I should ever do so, it would depend upon who the har- 
pooner might be, and that if he (the landlord) really had 
no other place for me, and the harpooner was not de- 
cidedly objectionable, why, rather than wander further 
about a strange town on so bitter a night, I would put up 
with the half of any decent man’s blanket. 

“ I thought so. All right ; take a seat. Supper ? — you 
want supper ? Supper’ll be ready directly.” 

I sat down on an old wooden settle, carved all over like 
a bench on the Battery. At one end a ruminating tar was 
still further adorning it with his jack-knife, stooping over 
and diligently working away at the space between his legs. 
He was trying his hand at a ship under full sail, but he 
didn’t make much headway, I thought. 

At last some four or five of us were summoned to our 
meal in an adjoining room. It was cold as Iceland — no fire 
at all — the landlord said he couldn’t afford it. Nothing 
but two dismal tallow candles, each in a winding sheet. 
We were fain to button up our monkey-jackets, and hold 
to our lips cups of scalding tea with * our half frozen 
fingers. But the fare was of the most substantial kind— 
not only meat and potatoes, but dumplings ; good heavens ! 
dumplings for supper ! One young fellow in a green box 


MOBY DICK. 


19 


coat, addressed himself to these dumplings in a most dire- 
ful manner. 

“ My boy,” said the landlord, “ you’ll have the night- 
mare to a dead sartainty.” 

“ Landlord,” I whispered, “ that ain’t the harpooner, is 
it?” 


“ Oh, no,” said he, looking a sort of diabolically funny, 
“ the harpooner is a dark complexioned chap. He never 
eats dumplings, he don’t — he eats nothing but steaks, and 
likes ’em rare.” 

“ The devil he does,” says I. “ Where is that harpooner ? 
Is he here ? ” 

“ He’ll he here afore long,” was the answer. 

I could not help it, but I began to feel suspicious of this 
“dark complexioned” harpooneer. At any rate, I made 
up my mind that if it so turned out that we should sleep 
together, he must undress and get into bed before I did. 

Supper over, the company went back to the bar-room, 
when, knowing not what else to do with myself, I resolved 
to spend the rest of the evening as a looker-on. 

Presently a rioting noise was heard without. Starting 
up, the landlord cried, “That’s the Grampus’s crew. 1 seed 
her reported in the offing this morning ; a three years’ voy- 
age, and a full ship. Hurrah, boys ; now we’ll have the 
latest news from the Feejees.” 

A tramping of sea boots was heard in the entry ; the 
door was flung open, and in rolled a wild set of mariners 
enough. Enveloped in their shaggy watch coats, and with 
their heads muffled in woollen comforters, all bedarned and 
ragged, and their beards stiff with icicles, they seemed an 
eruption of bears from Labrador. They had just landed 
from their boat, and this was the first house they entered. 
No wonder, then, that they made a straight wake for the 
whale’s mouth — the bar — when, the wrinkled little old 
Jonah, there officiating, soon poured them out brimmers all 
round. One complained of a bad cold in his head upon 
which Jonah mixed him a pitch-like potion of gin and mo- 
lasses, which he swore was a sovereign cure for all colds 
and catarrhs whatsoever, never mind of how long stand- 
ing, or whether caught off the coast of Labrador, or on the 
weather side of an ice-island. 

The liquor soon mounted into their heads, as it generally 
does even with the arrantest topers newly landed from sea, 
and they began capering about most obstreperously. 


20 


MOBY DICK. 


I observed, however, that one of them held somewhat 
aloof, and though he seemed desirous not to spoil the hilar- 
ity of his shipmates by his own sober face, yet upon the 
whole he refrained from making as much noise as the rest. 
This man interested me at once ; and since the sea-gods 
had ordained that he should soon become my shipmate 
(though but a sleeping-partner one, so far as this narrative 
is concerned), I will here venture upon a little description 
of him. He stood full six feet in height, with noble 
shoulders, and a chest like a coffer-dam. I have seldom 
seen such brawn in a man. His face was deeply brown and 
burnt, making his white teeth dazzling by the contrast ; 
while in the deep shadow’s of his eyes floated some reminis- 
cences that did not seem to give him much joy. His voice 
at once announced that he was a Southerner, and from his 
fine stature, I thought he must be one of those tall moun- 
taineers from the Alleghanian Ridge in Virginia. When the 
revelry of his companions had mounted to its height, this 
man- slipped away unobserved, and I saw no more of him 
till he became my comrade on the sea. In a few minutes, 
however, he was missed by his shipmates, and being, it 
seems, for some reason a huge favourite with them, -they 
raised a cry of “ Bulkington ! Bulkington ! where’s Bulk- 
ington?” and darted out of the house in pursuit of him. 

It was now r about nine o’clock, and the room seeming 
almost supernaturally quiet after these orgies, I began to 
congratulate myself upon a little plan that had occurred 
to me just previous to the entrance of the seamen. 

No man prefers to sleep two in a bed. In fact, you would a 
good deal rather not sleep with your own brother. I don’t 
know how it is, but people like to be private when they are 
sleeping. And when it comes to sleeping with an unknow n 
stranger, in a strange inn, in a strange town, and that stranger 
a harpooner, then your objections indefinitely multiply. 
Nor was there any earthly reason why I as a sailor should 
sleep two in a bed, more than anybody else; for sailors 
no more sleep two in a bed at sea, than bachelor Kings do 
ashore. To be sure they all sleep together in one apartment, 
but you have your own hammock, and cover yourself with 
your own blanket, and sleep in your own skin. 

The more I pondered over this harpooner, the more I 
abominated the thought of sleeping with him. It was fair 
to presume that being a harpooner, his linen or woollen, 
as the case might be, would not be of the tidiest, certainly 


MOBY DICK. 


21 


none of the finest. I began to twitch all over. Besides, it 
was getting late, and my decent harpooner ought to he home 
and going bedwards. Suppose now, he should tumble in 
upon me at midnight — how could I tell from what vile hole 
he had been coming ? 

“ Landlord ! I’ve changed my mind about that har- 
pooner. — I shan’t sleep with him. I’ll try the bench here.” 

“Just as you please; I’m sorry I can’t spare ye a table- 
cloth for a mattress, and it’s a plaguy rough board here” — 
feeling of the knots and notches. “ But wait a bit, Skrim- 
shander ; I’ve got a carpenter’s plane there in the bar — wait, 
I say, and I’ll make ye snug enough.” So saying he 
procured the plane ; and with his old silk handkerchief first 
dusting the bench, vigorously set to planing away at my 
bed, the while grinning like an ape. The shavings flew 
right and left ; till at last the plane-iron came bump against 
an indestructible knot. The landlord was near spraining 
his wrist, and I told him for heaven’s sake to quit — the bed 
was soft enough to suit me, and I did not know how all the 
planing in the world could make eider down of a pine plank. 
So gathering up the shavings with another grin, and throw- 
ing them into the great stove in the middle of the room, he 
went about his business, and left me in a brown study. 

I now took the measure of the bench, and found that it 
was a foot too short ; but that could be mended with a chair. 
But it was a foot too narrow, and the other bench in the 
room was about four inches higher than the planed one — so 
there was no yoking them. I then placed the first bench 
lengthwise along the only clear space against the wall, leav- 
ing a little interval between, for my back to settle down in. 
But I soon found that there came such a draught of cold 
air over me from under the sill of the window, that this plan 
would never do at all, especially as another current from 
the rickety door met the one from the window, and both 
together formed a series of small whirlwinds in the 
immediate vicinity of the spot where I had thought to spend 
the night. 

The devil fetch that harpooner, thought I, but stop! 
couldn’t I steal a march on him— bolt his door inside, and 
jump into his bed, not to be wakened by the most violent 
knockings? It seemed no bad idea; but upon second 
thoughts I dismissed it. For who could tell but what the 
next morning, so soon as I popped out of the room, 'the 
harpooner might be standing in the entry, all ready to 
knock me down ! 


MOBY DICK. 


22 


Still, looking round me again, and seeing no possible 
chance of spending a sufferable night unless in some other 
person’s bed, I began to think that, after all, I might be 
cherishing unwarrantable prejudices against this unknown 
harpooner. Thinks I, I’ll wait awhile ; he must be drop- 
ping in before long. I’ll have a good look at him then, and 
perhaps we may become jolly good bedfellows after all — 
there’s no telling. 

Bjit though the other boarders kept coming in by ones, 
twos, and threes, and going to bed, yet no sign of my har- 
pooner. 

“Landlord ! ” said I, “what sort of a chap is he — does he 
always keep such late hours?” It was now hard upon 
twelve o’clock. 

The landlord chuckled again with his lean chuckle, and 
seemed to be mightily tickled at something beyond my 
comprehension. “ No,” he answered, “ generally he’s an 
early bird — airley to bed and airley to rise — yes, he’s the bird 
what catches the worm. — But to-night he went out a ped- 
dling, you see, and I don’t see what on airth keeps him so 
late, unless, may be can’t sell his head.” 

“Can’t sell his head? — What sort of a bamboozingly 
* story is this you are telling me?” getting into a towering 
rage. “ Do you pretend to say, landlord, that this har- 
pooner is actually engaged this blessed Saturday night, or 
rather Sunday morning, in peddling his head around this 
town ? ” 

“ That’s precisely it,” said the landlord, “ and I told him 
he couldn’t sell it here, the market’s overstocked.” 

“ With what ?” shouted I. 

“ With heads to be sure ; ain’t there too many heads in 
the world ? ” 

“I tell you what it is, landlord,” said I quite calmly, 
“you’d better stop spinning that yarn to me — I’m not 
green.” 

“ May be not,” taking out a stick and whittling a tooth- 
pick, “ but I rayther guess you’ll be done brown if that ere 
harpooner hears you a slanderin’ his head.” 

“ I’ll break it for him,” said I, now flying into a passion 
again at this unaccountable farrago of the landlord’s. 

“ It’s broke a’ready,” said he. 

“ Broke,” said I — “ broke , do you mean? ” 

“ Sartain, and that’s the very reason he can’t sell it, I 
guess.” 


MOBY DICK. 


23 


“ Landlord,” said I, going up to him as cool as Mt. Hecla 
in a snow-storm, — “ landlord, stop whittling. You and I 
must understand one another, and that too without delay. 
I come to your house and want a bed ; you tell me you can 
only give me half a one ; that the other half belongs to a 
certain harpooner. And about this harpooner, whom I 
have not yet seen, you persist in telling me the most 
mystifying and exasperating stories, tending to beget in me 
an uncomfortable feeling towards the man who you design 
for my bedfellow — a sort of connection, landlord, which is 
an intimate and confidential one in the highest degree. I 
now demand of you to speak out and tell me who and what 
this harpooner is, and whether I shall be in all respects 
safe to spend the night with him. And in the first place, 
you will be so good as to unsay that story about selling his 
head, which if true I take to be good evidence that this 
harpooner is stark mad, and I’ve no idea of sleeping with 
a madman ; and you, sir, you I mean, landlord, you, sir, by 
trying to induce me to do so knowingly, would thereby 
render yourself liable to a criminal prosecution.” 

“ Wall,” said the landlord, fetching a long breath, “ that’s 
a purty long sarmon for a chap that rips a little now and 
then. But be easy, be easy, this here harpooner I have 
been tellin’ you of has just arrived from the south seas, 
where he brought up a lot of ’balmed New Zealand heads 
(great curios, you know), and lie’s sold all on ’em but one, 
and that one he’s trying to sell to-night, ’cause to-morrow’s 
Sunday, and it would not do to be sellin’ human heads about 
the streets when folks is goin’ to churches. He wanted to, 
last Sunday, but I stopped him just as he was goin’ out of 
the door with four heads strung on a string, for all the airth 
like a string of inions.” 

This account cleared up the otherwise unaccountable 
mystery, and, showed that the landlord, after all, had had 
no idea of fooling me — but at the same time what could I 
think of a harpooner who stayed out of a Saturday night 
clean into the holy Sabbath, engaged in such a cannibal 
business as selling the heads of dead idolaters? 

“ Depend upon it, landlord, that harpooner is a dan- 
gerous man.” 

“He pays reg’lar,” was the rejoinder. “But come, it’s 
getting dreadful late, you had better be turning flukes — 
it’s a nice bed ; Sal and me slept in that ere bed the night 
we were spliced. There’s plenty room for two to kick 


24 


MOBY DICK. 


about in that bed ; it’s an almighty big bed that. Why, 
afore we give it up, Sal used to put our Sam and little 
Johnny in the foot of it. But I got a dreaming and sprawl- 
ing about one night, and somehow, Sam got pitched on the 
floor, and came near breaking his arm. Arter that, Sal 
said it wouldn’t do. Come along here, I’ll give ye a glim 
in a jiffy ; ” and so saying he lighted a candle and held it 
towards me, offering to lead the way. But I stood irreso- 
lute ; when looking at a clock in the corner, he exclaimed 
“I vum it’s Sunday — you won’t see that harpooner to- 
night ; he’s come to anchor somewhere — come along then ; 
do come ; won't ye come? ” 

I considered the matter a moment, and then up-stairs we 
went, and I was ushered into a small room, cold as a clam, 
and furnished, sure enough with a prodigious bed, almost 
big enough indeed for any four harpooners to sleep 
abreast. 

“ There,” said the landlord, placing the candle on a crazy 
old sea chest that did double duty as a wash-stand and 
centre table ; “ there, make yourself comfortable now, and 
good-night to ye.” I turned round from eyeing the bed, 
but he had disappeared. 

Folding back the counterpane, I stooped over the bed. 
Though none of the most elegant, it yet stood the scrutiny 
tolerably well. I then glanced round the room ; and besides 
the bedstead and centre table, could see no other furniture 
belonging to the place, but a rude shelf, the four walls, and 
a papered fireboard representing a man striking a whale. 
Of things not properly belonging to the room, there was a 
hammock lashed up, and thrown upon the floor in one 
corner; also a large seaman’s bag, containing the har- 
pooner’s wardrobe, no doubt in lieu of a land trunk. Like- 
wise, there was a parcel of outlandish bone fish hooks on 
the shelf over the fireplace, and a tall harpoon standing at 
the head of the bed. 

But what is this on the chest ? I took it up, and held it 
close to the lamplight, and felt it, and smelt it, and tried 
every way possible to arrive at some satisfactory conclusion 
concerning it. I can compare it to nothing but a large door 
mat, ornamented at the edges with little tinkling tags some- 
thing like the stained porcupine quills round an Indian 
moccasin. There was a hole or slit in the middle of this 
mat, as you see the same in South American ponchos. But 
could it be possible that any sober harpooner would get 


MOBY DICK. 


25 


into a door mat, and parade the streets of any Christian 
town in that sort of guise ? I put it on, to try it, and it 
weighed me down like a hamper, being uncommonly shaggy 
and thick, and I thought a little damp, as though this 
mysterious harpooner had been wearing it of a rainy day. 
I went up in it to a bit of glass stuck against the wall, and 
I never saw such a sight in my life. I tore myself out of it 
in such a hurry that I gave myself a kink in the neck. 

I sat down on the side of the bed, and commenced think- 
ing about this head-peddling harpooner, and his door mat. 
After thinking some time on the bed-side, I got up and took 
off my monkey-jacket, and then stood in the middle of the 
room thinking. I then took off my coat, and thought a 
little more in my shirt-sleeves. But beginning to feel very 
cold now, half undressed as I was, and remembering what 
the landlord said about the harpooner’s not coming home 
at all that night, it being so very late, I made no more ado, 
but jumped out of my pantaloons and boots, and then blow- 
ing out the light tumbled into bed, and commended myself 
to the care of heaven. 

Whether that mattress was stuffed with corn-cobs or 
broken crockery, there is no telling, but I rolled about a 
good deal, and could not sleep for a long time. At last I 
slid off into a light doze, and had pretty nearly made a 
good offing towards the land of Nod, when I heard a heavy 
footfall in the passage, and saw a glimmer of light come 
into the room from under the door. 

Lord save me, thinks I, that must be the harpooner, the 
infernal head-pedlar. But I lay perfectly still, and resolved 
not to say a word till spoken to. Holding a light in one - 
hand, and that identical New Zealand head in the other, the 
stranger entered the room, and without looking towards 
the bed, placed his candle a good way off from me on the 
floor in one corner, and then began working away at the 
knotted cords of the large bag I before spoke of as being in 
the room. I 'vfois all eagerness to see his face, but he kept 
it averted for some time while employed in unlacing the 
bag’s mouth. This accomplished, however, he turned round 
— when, good heavens ! what a sight ! Such a face ! It 
was of a dark, purplish, yellow color, here and there stuck 
over with large, blackish looking squares. Yes, it’s just as 
I thought, he’s a terrible bedfellow ; he’s been in a fight, 
got dreadfully cut, and here he is, just from the surgeon. 
But at that moment he chanced to turn his face so towards 


26 


MOBY DICK. 


the light, that I plainly saw they coulcl not be sticking- 
plasters at all, those black squares on his cheeks. They 
were stains of some sort or other. At first I knew not what 
to make of this ; but soon an inkling of the truth occurred 
to me. I remembered a story of a white man — a whaleman 
too — who, falling among the cannibals, had been tattoed by 
them. I concluded that this harpooner, in the course of his 
distant voyages, must have met with a similar adventure. 
And what is it, thought I, after all ! It’s only his outside ; 
a man can be honest in any sort of skin. But then, what 
to make of his unearthly complexion, that part of it, I mean, 
lying round about, and completely independent of the 
squares of tattooing. To be sure, it might be nothing but 
a good coat of tropical tanning ; but I never heard of a hot 
sun’s tanning a white man into a purplish yellow one. How- 
ever, I had never been in the South Seas ; and perhaps the 
sun there produced these extraordinary effects upon the 
skin. Now, while all these ideas were passing through me 
like lightning, this harpooner never noticed me at all. But, 
after some difficulty having opened his bag, he commenced 
fumbling in it, and presently pulled out a sort of tomahawk, 
and a sealskin wallet with the hair on. Placing these on 
the old chest in the middle of the room, he then took the 
New Zealand head — a ghastly thing enough — and crammed 
it down into the bag. He now took off his hat — a new 
beaver hat — when I came nigh singing out with fresh sur- 
prise. There was no hair on his head — none to speak of at 
least — nothing but a small scalp-knot twisted up on his fore- 
head. His bald purplish head now looked for all the world 
like a mildewed skull. Had not the stranger stood between 
me and the door, I would have bolted out of it quicker than 
ever I bolted a dinner. 

Even as it was, I thought something of slipping out of 
the window, but it was the second floor back. I am no 
coward, but what to make of this head-peddling purple ras- 
cal altogether passed my comprehension. Ignorance is the 
parent of fear, and being completely nonplussed and con- 
founded about the stranger, I confess I was now as much 
afraid of him as if it was the devil himself who had thus 
broken into my room at the dead of night. In fact, I was 
so afraid of him that I was not game enough just then to' 
address him, and demand a satisfactory answer concerning 
what seemed inexplicable in him. 

Meanwhile, he continued the business of undressing, and 


MOB Y DICK. 


27 


at last showed his chest and arms. As I live, these covered 
parts of him were checkered with the same squares as his 
face ; his back, too, was all over the same dark squares ; he 
seemed to have been in a Thirty Years’ War, and just es- 
caped from it with a sticking-plaster shirt. Still more, his 
very legs were marked, as if a parcel of dark green frogs 
were running up the trunks of young palms. It was now 
quite plain that he must be some abominable savage or other 
shipped aboard of a whaleman in the South Seas, and- so 
landed in this Christian country. I quaked to think of it. 
A pedlar of heads too — perhaps the heads of his own 
brothers. He might take a fancy to mine — heavens ! look 
at that tomahawk ! 

But there was no time for shuddering, for now the savage 
went about something that completely fascinated my atten- 
tion, and convinced me that he must indeed be a heathen. 
Going to his heavy grego, or wrapall, or dreadnaught, which 
he had previously hung on a chair, he fumbled in the pockets, 
and produced at length a curious little deformed image with 
a hunch on its back, and exactly the colour of a three days’ 
old Congo baby. Remembering the embalmed head, at first 
I almost thought that this black manikin was a real baby 
preserved in some similar manner. But seeing that it was 
not at all limber, and that it glistened a good deal like pol- 
ished ebony, I concluded that it must be nothing but a 
wooden idol, which indeed it proved to be. For now the 
savage goes up to the empty fireplace, and removing the 
papered fireboard, sets up this little hunchbacked image, 
like a tenpin, between the andirons. The chimney jambs 
and all the bricks inside were very sooty, so that I thought 
this fireplace made a very appropriate little shrine or chapel 
for his Congo idol. 

I now screwed my eyes hard towards the half hidden im- 
age, feeling but ill at ease meantime — to see what was next to 
follow. First he takes about a double handful of shavings 
out of his grego pocket, and places them carefully before 
the idol ; then laying a bit of ship biscuit on top and apply- 
ing the flame from the lamp, he kindled the shavings into a 
-sacrificial blaze. Presently, after many hasty snatches into 
the fire, and still hastier withdrawals of his fingers (where- 
by he seemed to be scorching them badly), he at last suc- 
ceeded in drawing out the biscuit ; then blowing off the heat 
and ashes a little, he made a polite offer of it to the little 
negro. But the little devil did not seem to fancy such dry 


28 


MOBY DICK . 


sort of fare at all ; he never moved his lips. All these 
strange antics were accompanied by still stranger guttural 
noises from the devotee, who seemed to be praying in a sing- 
song or else singing some pagan psalmody or other, during 
which his face twitched about in the most unnatural man- 
ner. At last extinguishing the fire, he took the idol up very 
unceremoniously, and bagged it again in his grego pocket 
as carelessly as if he were a sportsman bagging a dead 
woodcock. 

All these queer proceedings increased my uncomfortable- 
ness, and seeing him now exhibiting strong symptoms of 
concluding his business operations, and jumping into bed 
with me, I thought it was high time, now or never, before 
the light was put out, to break the spell in which I had so 
long been bound. 

But the interval I spent in deliberating what to say, was 
a fatal one. Taking up his tomahawk from the table, he 
examined the head of it for an instant, and then holding it 
to the light, with his mouth at the handle, he puffed out 
great clouds of tobacco smoke. The next moment the light 
was extinguished, and this wild cannibal, tomahawk between 
his teeth, sprang into bed with me. I sang out, I could not 
help it now ; and giving a sudden grunt of astonishment 
he began feeling me. 

Stammering out something, I knew not what, I rolled 
away from him against the wall, and then conjured him, 
whoever or whatever he might be, to keep quiet, and let me 
get up and light the lamp again. But his guttural responses 
satisfied me at once that he but ill comprehended my 
meaning. 

“ Who-e debel you?” — he at last said — “you no speak-e, 
dam-me, I kill-e.” And so saying the lighted tomahawk 
began flourishing about me in the dark. 

“ Landlord, for God’s sake, Peter Coffin ! ” shouted I. 
“Landlord! Watch! Coffin! Angels! save me!” 

“ Speake-e ! tell-ee me who-ee be, or dam-me, I kill-e ! ” 
again growled the cannibal, while his horrid flourisliings of 
the tomahawk scattered the hot tobacco ashes about me till 
I thought my linen would get on fire. But thank heaven, 
at that moment the landlord came into the room light in 
hand, and leaping from the bed I ran up to him. 

“Don’t be afraid now,” said he, grinning again. “Quee- 
queg here wouldn’t harm a hair of your head.” 


MOBY DICK. 29 

“Stop your grinning,” shouted I, “and why didn’t you 
tell me that that infernal harpooner was a cannibal?” 

“I thought ye know’d it; — didn’t I tell ye, he was a ped- 
dlin’ heads around town? — but turn flukes again and go to 
sleep. Queequeg, look here — you sabbee me, I sabbee you 
— this man sleepe you — you sabbee?” 

“Me sabbee plenty” — grunted Queequeg, puffing away 
at his pipe and sitting up in bed. 

“You gettee in,” he added, motioning to me with his 
tomahawk, and throwing the clothes to one side. He really 
did this in not only a civil but a really kind and charitable 
way. I stood looking at him a moment. For all his tattoo- 
ings he was on the whole a clean, comely looking cannibal. 
What’s all this fuss I have been making about, thought I 
to myself — the man’s a human being just as I am: he has 
just as much reason to fear me as I have to be afraid of 
him. Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken 
Christian. 

“Landlord,” said I, “tell him to stash his tomahawk 
there, or pipe, or whatever you call it; tell him to stop 
smoking, in short, and I will turn in with him. But I don’t 
fancy having a man smoking in bed with me. It’s dan- 
gerous. Besides, I ain’t insured.” 

This being told to Queequeg, he at once complied, and 
again politely motioned me to get into bed — rolling over to 
one side as much as to say — I won’t touch a leg of ye. 

“ Good-night, landlord,” said I, “ you may go.” 

I turned in, and never slept better in my life. 


CHAPTER IV. 

THE COUNTERPANE. 

Upon waking next morning about daylight, I found Quee- 
queg’s arm thrown over me in the most loving and affec- 
tionate manner. You had almost thought I had been his 
wife. The counterpane was of patchwork, full of odd little 
parti-coloured squares and triangles ; and this arm of his 
tattooed all over with an interminable Cretan labyrinth of 
a figure, no two parts of which were of one precise shade 


30 


MOBY DICK. 


— owing I suppose to his keeping his arm at sea unmethod- 
ically in sun and shade, his shirt-sleeves irregularly rolled 
up at various times — this same arm of his, I say, looked 
for all the world like a strip of that same patchwork quilt. 
Indeed, partly lying on it as the arm did when I first awoke, 
I could hardly tell it from the quilt, they so blended their 
hues together; and it w^as only by the sense of weight 
and pressure that I could tell that Queequeg was hugging 
me. 

My sensations were strange. Let me try to explain them. 
When I was a child, I well remember a somewhat similar 
circumstance that befell me ; whether it was a reality or a 
dream, I never could entirely settle. The circumstance 
was this. I had been cutting up some caper or other — I 
think it was trying to crawl up the chimney, as I had seen 
a little sweep do a few days previous ; and my stepmother 
who, somehow or other, was all the time whipping me, or 
sending me to bed supperless, — my mother dragged me by 
the legs out of the chimney and packed me off to bed, 
though it was only two o’clock in the afternoon of the 21st 
June, the longest day in the year in our hemisphere. I felt 
dreadfully. But there Avas no help for it, so up-stairs I 
went to my little room in the third floor, undiessed my- 
self as slowly as possible so as to kill time, and with a 
bitter sigh got between the sheets. 

I lay there dismally calculating that sixteen entire hours 
must elapse before I could hope for a resurrection. Six- 
teen hours in bed ! the small of my back ached to think of 
it. And it was so light too ; the sun shining in at the 
window, and a great rattling of coaches in the streets, and 
the sound of gay voices all over the house. I felt worse 
and worse — at last I got up, dressed, and softly going down 
in my stockinged feet, sought out my stepmother, and sud- 
denly threw myself at her feet, beseeching her as a particu- 
lar favour to give me a good slippering for my misbehaviour ; 
anything indeed but condemning me to lie abed such an 
unendurable length of time. But she was the best and 
most conscientious of stepmothers, and back I had to go to 
my room. For several hours I lay there broad awake, fuel- 
ing a great deal worse than I have ever done since, even 
from the greatest subsequent misfortunes. At last I must 
have fallen into a troubled nightmare of a doze ; and slowly 
waking from it — half steeped in dreams — I opened my eyes, 
and the before sun-lit room was now wrapped in outer 


MOB Y DICK. 


31 


darkness. Instantly I felt a shock running through all my 
frame; nothing was to he seen, and nothing was to be 
heard ; but a supernatural hand seemed placed in mine. 
My arm hung over the counterpane, and the nameless, un- 
imaginable, silent form or phantom, to which the hand 
belonged, seemed closely seated by my bedside. For what 
seemed ages piled on ages, I lay there, frozen with the most 
awful fears, not daring to drag away my hand ; yet ever 
thinking that if I could but stir it one single inch, the hor- 
rid spell would be broken. I knew not how this conscious- 
ness at last glided away from me ; but waking in the morn- 
ing, I shudderingly remembered it all, and for days and 
weeks and months afterwards I lost myself in confounding 
attempts to explain the mystery. Nay, to this very hour, 
I often puzzle myself with it. 

Now, take away the awful fear, and my sensations at 
feeling the supernatural hand in mine were very similar, in 
their strangeness, to those which I experienced on waking 
up and seeing Queequeg’s pagan arm thrown round me. 
But at length all the past night’s events soberly recurred, 
one by one, in fixed reality, and then I lay only alive to the 
comical predicament. For though I tried to move his arm 
— unlock his bridegroom clasp — yet, sleeping as he was, 
he still hugged me tightly, as though naught but death 
should part us twain. I now strove to rouse him — “ Quee- 
queg ! ” — but his only answer was a snore. I then rolled 
over, my neck feeling as if it were in a horse-collar ; and 
suddenly felt a slight scratch. Throwing aside the counter- 
pane, there lay the tomahawk sleeping by the savage’s side, 
as if it were a hatchet-faced baby. A pretty pickle, truly, 
thought I ; abed here in a strange house in the broad day, 
with a cannibal and a tomahawk ! “ Queequeg ! — in the 

name of goodness, Queequeg, wake ! ” At length, by dint of 
much wriggling, and loud and incessant expostulations 
upon the unbecomingness of his hugging a fellow male in 
that matrimonial sort of style, I succeeded in extracting a 
grunt ; and presently, he drew back his arm, shook himself 
all over like a Newfoundland dog just from the water, and 
sat up in bed, stiff as a pike-staff, looking at me, and rub- 
bing his eyes as if he did not altogether remember how I 
came to be there, though a dim consciousness of knowing 
something about me seemed slowly dawning over him. 
Meanwhile, I lay quietly eyeing him, having no serious mis- 
givings now, and bent upon narrowly observing so curious 


32 


MOBY DICK. 


a creature. When, at last, his mind seemed made up 
touching the character of his bedfellow, and he became, 
as it were, reconciled to the fact ; he jumped out upon the 
floor, and by certain signs and sounds gave me to under- 
stand that, if it pleased me he would dress first and then 
leave me to dress afterwards, leaving the whole apartment 
to myself. Thinks I, Queequeg, under the circumstances, 
this is a very civilised overture ; but, the truth is, these 
savages have an innate sense of delicacy, say what you will ; 
it is marvellous how essentially polite they are. I pay this 
particular compliment to Queequeg, because he treated me 
with so much civility and consideration, while I was guilty 
of great rudeness ; staring at him from the bed, and watch- 
ing all his toilette motions : for the time my curiosity get- 
ting the better of my breeding. Nevertheless, a man like 
Queequeg you don’t see every day, he and his ways were 
well worth unusual regarding. 

He commenced dressing at top by donning his beaver 
hat, a very tali one, by-the-bye, and then — still minus his 
trowsers — he hunted up his boots. What under the heavens 
he did it for, I cannot tell, but his next movement was to 
crush himself — boots in hand, and hat on — under the bed ; 
when, from sundry violent gaspings and strainings, I in- 
ferred he was hard at work booting himself ; though by no 
law of propriety that I ever heard of, is any man required 
to be private when putting on his boots. But Queequeg, 
do you see, was a creature in the transition state — neither 
caterpillar nor butterfly. He was just enough civilised to 
show off his outlandishness in the strangest possible man- 
ner. His education was not yet completed. He was an 
undergraduate. If he had not been a small degree civilised, 
he very probably would not have troubled himself with boots 
at all ; but then, if he had not been still a savage, he never 
would have dreamt of getting under the bed to put them 
on. At last, he emerged with his hat very much dented 
and crushed down over his eyes, and began creaking and 
limping about the room, as if, not being much accustomed 
to boots, his pair of damp, wrinkled cowhide ones— prob- 
ably not made to order either — rather pinched and tormented 
him at the first go off of a bitter cold morning. 

Seeing, now, that there were no curtains to the window, 
and that the street being very narrow, the house opposite 
commanded a plain view into the room, and observing more 
and more the indecorous figure that Queequeg made, stav- 


MOBY DICK. 


33 


ing about with little else but his hat and boots on ; I begged 
him as well as I could, to accelerate his toilet somewhat, 
and particularly to get into his pantaloons as soon as pos- 
sible. He complied, and then proceeded to wash himself. 
At that time in the morning any Christian would have 
washed his face ; but Queequeg, to my amazement, con- 
tented himself with restricting his ablutions to his chest, 
arms, and hands. He then donned his waistcoat, and tak- 
ing up a piece of hard soap on the wash-stand centre-table, 
dipped it into water and commenced lathering his face. I 
was watching to see where he kept his razor, when lo and 
behold, he takes the harpoon from the bed corner, slips out 
the long wooden stock, unsheathes the head, whets it a 
little on his boot, and striding up to the bit of mirror against 
the wall, begins a vigorous scraping, or rather harpooning 
of his cheeks. Thinks I, Queequeg, this is using Roger’s 
best cutlery with a vengeance. Afterwards I wondered 
the less at this operation when I came to know of what fine 
steel the head of a harpoon is made, and how exceedingly 
sharp the long straight edges are always kept. 

The rest of his toilet was soon achieved, and he proudly 
marched out of the room, wrapped up in his great pilot 
monkey-jacket, and sporting his harpoon like a marshal’s 
baton. 


CHAPTER V. 

BREAKFAST. 

I quickly followed suit, and descending into the bar-room 
accosted the grinning landlord very pleasantly. I cherished 
no malice towards him, though he had been skylarking 
with me not a little in the matter of my bedfellow. 

However, a good laugh is a mighty good thing, and rather 
too scarce a good thing ; the more’s the pity. So, if any one 
man, in his own proper person, afford stuff for a good joke 
to anybody, let him not be backward, but let him cheer- 
fully allow himself to spend and be spent in that way. 
And the man that has anything bountifully laughable about 
him, be sure there is more in that man than you perhaps 
think for. 


3 


34 


MOB Y LICK . 


The bar-room was now full of the hoarders who had been 
dropping in the night previous, and whom I had not as yet 
had a good look at. They were nearly all whalemen; 
chief mates, and second mates, and third mates, and sea 
carpenters, and sea coopers, and sea blacksmiths, and har- 
pooners, and ship keepers ; a brown and brawny company, 
with bosky beards; an unshorn, shaggy set, all wearing 
monkey-jackets for morning gowns. 

You could pretty plainly tell how long each one had been 
ashore. This young fellow’s healthy cheek is like a sun- 
toasted pear in hue, and would seem to smell almost as 
musky ; he cannot have been three days landed from his 
Indian voyage. That man next him looks a few shades 
lighter ; you might say a touch of satin wood is in him. 
In the complexion of a third still lingers a tropic tawn, but 
slightly bleached withal ; he doubtless has tarried whole 
weeks ashore. But who could show a cheek like Queequeg ? 
which, barred with various tints, seemed like the Andes’ 
western slope, to show forth in one array, contrasting 
climates, zone by zone. 

“ Grub, ho ! ” now cried the landlord, flinging open a door, 
and in we went to breakfast. 

They say that men who have seen the world, thereby 
become quite at ease in manner, quite self-possessed in com- 
pany. Not always, though : Ledyard, the great New Eng- 
land traveller, and Mungo Park, the Scotch one ; of all men, 
they possessed the least assurance in the parlor. But per- 
haps the mere crossing of Siberia in a sledge drawn by dogs 
as Ledyard did, or the taking a long solitary walk on an 
empty stomach, in the negro heart of Africa, which was the 
sum of poor Mungo’s performances — this kind of travel, I 
say, may not be the very best mode of attaining a high 
social polish. Still, for the most part, that sort of thing is 
to be had anywhere. 

These reflections just here are occasioned by the circum- 
stance that after we were all seated at the table, and I was 
preparing to hear some good stories about whaling ; to my 
no small surprise, nearly every man maintained a profound 
silence. And not only that, but they looked embarrassed. 
Yes, here were a set of sea-dogs, many of whom without 
the slightest bashfulness had boarded great whales on the 
high seas — entire strangers to them — and duelled them dead 
without winking ; and yet, here they sat at a social break- 
fast-table — all of the same calling, all of kindred tastes — 


MOBY DICK . 


35 


looking round as sheepishly at each other as though they 
had never been out of sight of some sheepfold among the 
Green Mountains. A curious sight; these bashful bears, 
these timid warrior whalemen ! 

But as for Queequeg — why, Queequeg sat there among 
them — at the head of the table, too, it so chanced; as cool 
as an icicle. To be sure I cannot say much for his breed- 
ing. His greatest admirer could not have cordially justified 
his bringing his harpoon in to breakfast with him, and using 
it there without ceremony ; reaching over the table with it. 
to the imminent jeopardy of many heads, and grappling 
the beefsteaks towards him. But that was certainly very 
coolly done by him, and every one knows that in most 
people’s estimation, to do anything coolly is to do it gen- 
teelly. 

We will not speak of all Queequeg’s peculiarities here ; 
how he eschewed coffee and hot rolls, and applied his un- 
divided attention to beefsteaks, done rare. Enough, that 
when breakfast was over he withdrew like the rest into the 
public room, lighted his tomahawk-pipe, and was sitting 
there quietly digesting and smoking with his inseparable 
hat on, when I sallied out for a stroll. 


CHAPTER VI. 

THE STREET. 

If I had been astonished at first catching a glimpse of so 
outlandish an individual as Queequeg circulating among the 
polite society of a civilised town, that astonishment soon 
departed upon taking my first daylight stroll through the 
streets of New Bedford. 

In thoroughfares nigh the docks, any considerable seaport 
will frequently offer to view the queerest looking nonde- 
scripts from foreign parts. Even in Broadway and Chest- 
nut streets, Mediterranean mariners will sometimes jostle 
the affrighted ladies. Regent-street is not unknown to 
Lascars and Malays; and at Bombay, in the Apollo Green, 
live Yankees have often scared the natives. But New 
Bedford beats all Water-street and Wapping. In these 
last-mentioned haunts you see only sailors ; but in New 
Bedford, actual cannibals stand chatting at street corner * 


86 


MOBY DICK. 


savages outright ; many of whom yet carry on their bones 
unholy flesh. It makes a stranger stare. 

But, besides the Feejeeans, Tonga tabooars, Erroman- 
goans, Pannangians, and Brighgians, and, besides the wild 
specimens of the whaling-craft which unheeded reel about 
the streets, you will see other sights still more curious, 
certainly more comical. There weekly arrive in this town 
scores of green Vermonters and New Hampshire men, all 
athirst for gain and glory in the fishery. They are mostly 
young, of stalwart frames ; fellows who have felled 
forests, and now seek to drop the axe and snatch the whale- 
lance. Many are as green as the Green Mountains whence 
they came. In some things you would think them but a 
few hours old. Look there ! that chap strutting round the 
corner. He wears a heaver hat and swallow-tailed coat, 
girdled with a sailor-belt and sheath-knife. Here comes an- 
other with a sou’-wester and a bombazine cloak. 

No town-bred dandy will compare with a country-bred 
one — I mean a downright bumpkin dandy — a fellow that, 
in the dog-days, will mow his two acres in buckskin gloves 
for fear of tanning his hands. Now when a country dandy 
like this takes it into lik head to make a distinguished 
reputation, and joins the great whale-fishery, you should 
see the comical things he does upon reaching the seaport. 
In bespeaking his sea-outfit, he orders hell-buttons to his 
waistcoats; straps to his canvas trowsers. Ah, poor Hay- 
Seed! how bitterly will hurst those straps in the first 
howling gale, when thou art driven, straps, buttons, and 
all, down the throat of the tempest. 

But think not that this famous town has only harpoon- 
ers, cannibals, and bumpkins to show her visitors. Not 
at all. Still New Bedford is a queer place. Had it not 
been for us whalemen, that tract of land would this day 
perhaps have been in as howling condition as the coast of 
Labrador. As it is, parts of her back country are enough 
to frighten one, they look so bony. The town itself is per- 
haps the dearest place to live in, in all New England. It 
is a land of oil, true enough : but not like Canaan ; a land, 
also, of corn and wine. The streets do not run with milk ; 
nor in the spring-time do they pave them with fresh eggs. 
Yet, in spite of this, nowhere in all America will you find 
more patrician-like houses ; parks and gardens more opulent, 
than in New Bedford. Whence came they ? how planted 
upon this once scraggy scoria of a country ? 


MOBY LICK. 


37 


Go and gaze upon the iron emblematical harpoons round 
yonder lofty mansion, and your question will he answered. 
Yes; all these brave houses and flowery gardens came from 
the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans. One and all, they 
were harpooned and dragged up hither from the bottom of 
the sea. Can Herr Alexander perform a feat like that? 

In New Bedford, fathers, they say, give whales for dowers 
to their daughters, and portion off their nieces with a few 
porpoises a-piece. You must goto New Bedford to see a 
brilliant wedding ; for, they say, they have reservoirs of 
oil in every house, and every night recklessly burn their 
lengths in spermaceti candles. 

In summer time, the town is sweet to see ; full of 
fine maples — long avenues of green and gold. And in 
August, high in air, the beautiful and bountiful horse-chest- 
nuts, candelabra-wise, proffer the passer-by their tapering 
upright cones of congregated blossoms. So omnipotent is 
art ; which in many a district of New Bedford has superin- 
duced bright terraces of flowers upon the barren refuse 
rocks thrown aside at creation’s final day. 

And the women of New Bedford, they bloom like their 
own red roses. But roses only bloom in summer ; whereas 
the fine carnation of their cheeks is perennial as sunlight in 
the seventh heavens. Elsewhere match that bloom of 
theirs, ye cannot, save in Salem, where they tell me the 
young girls breathe such musk, their sailor sweethearts 
smell them miles off shore, as though they were drawing 
nigh the odorous Moluccas instead of the Puritanic sands. 


CHAPTER VII. 

THE CHAPEL. 

In this same New Bedford there stands a Whaleman’s 
Chapel, and few are the moody fishermen, shortly bound 
for the Indian Ocean or Pacific, who fail to make a Sunday 
visit to the spot. I am sure that I did not. 

Returning from my first morning stroll, I again sallied 
out upon this special errand. The sky had changed from 
clear, sunny cold, to driving sleet and mist. Wrapping 
myself in my shaggy jacket of the cloth called bearskin, I 
fought my way against the stubborn storm. Entering, I 


38 


MOBY DICK. 


found a small scattered congregation of sailors, and sailors’ 
wives and widows. A muffled silence reigned, only broken 
at times by the shrieks of the storm. Each silent wor- 
shipper seemed purposely sitting apart from the other, as 
if each silent grief were insular and incommunicable. The 
chaplain had not yet arrived ; and there these silent islands 
of men and women sat steadfastly eyeing several marble 
tablets, with black borders, masoned into the wall on either 
side the pulpit. Three of them ran something like the fol- 
lowing, but I do not pretend to quote : — 

SACEED 

To THE MeMOEY 
OF 

JOHN TALBOT, 

Who, at the age of eighteen, was lost overboard, 

Near the Isle of Desolation, off Patagonia, 

November 1st, 1836. 

THIS TABLET 
Is erected to his Memory 
BY HIS SISTEK. 


SACEED 

TO THE MEMOEY 
OF 

ROBERT LONG, WILLIS ELLERY, 

NATHAN COLEMAN, WALTER CANNY, SETH MACY, 
AND SAMUEL GLEIG, 

Forming one of the boats’ crews 

OF 

THE SHIP ELIZA, 

Who were towed out of sight by a Whale, 

On the Off-shore Ground in the 
PACIFIC, 

December 31st, 1839. 

THIS MAEBLE 

Is here placed by their surviving 
SHIPMATES. 


SACEED 

To The Memoey 
of 

The late 

CAPTAIN EZEKIEL HARDY, 

Who in the bows of his boat was killed by a 
Sperm Whale on the coast of Japan, 
August 3d, 1833. 

THIS TABLET 

Is erected to his Memory 
BY 

HIS WIDOW. 


MOB Y T)ICK. 


39 


Shaking off the sleet from my ice-glazed hat and jacket, I 
seated myself near the door, and turning sideways was 
surprised to see Queequeg near me. Affected by the 
solemnity of the scene, there was a wondering gaze of in- 
credulous curiosity in his countenance. This savage was 
the only person present who seemed to notice my entrance ; 
because he was the only one who could not read, and, there- 
fore, was not reading those frigid inscriptions on the wall. 
Whether any of the relatives of the seamen whose names 
appeared there were now among the congregation, I knew 
not ; but so many are the unrecorded accidents in the fish- 
ery, and so plainly did several women present wear the 
countenance if not the trappings of some unceasing grief, 
that I feel sure that here before me were assembled those, 
in whose unhealing hearts the sight of those bleak tablets 
sympathetically caused the old wounds to bleed afresh. 

Oh ! ye whose dead lie buried beneath the green grass ; 
who standing among flowers can say — here, here lies my 
beloved ; ye know not the desolation that broods in bosoms 
like these. What bitter blanks in those black-bordered 
marbles which cover no ashes ! What despair in those 
immovable inscriptions ! What deadly voids and unbidden 
infidelities in the lines that seem to gnaw upon all Faith, 
and refuse resurrections to the beings who have placelessly 
perished without a grave. As well might those tablets 
stand in the cave of Elephanta as here. 

In what census of living creatures, the dead of mankind 
are included ; why it is that a universal proverb says of 
them, that they tell no tales, though containing more 
secrets than the Goodwin Sands ; how it is that to his name 
who yesterday departed for the other world, we prefix so 
significant and infidel a word, and yet do not thus entitle 
him, if he but embarks for the remotest Indies of this living 
earth ; why the Life Insurance Companies pay death-for- 
feitures upon immortals ; in what eternal, unstirring par- 
alysis, and deadly, hopeless trance, yet lies antique Adam 
who died sixty round centuries ago ; how it is that we still 
refuse to be comforted for those who we nevertheless main- 
tain are dwelling in unspeakable bliss ; why all the living 
so strive to hush all the dead ; wherefore but the rumour 
of a knocking in a tomb will terrify a whole city. All these 
things are not without their meanings. 

But Faith, like a jackal, feeds among the tombs, and 
even from these dead doubts she gathers her most vital 
hope. 


40 


MOBY RTCK. 


It needs scarcely to be told, with what feelings, on the 
eve of a Nantucket voyage, I regarded those marble tablets, 
and by the murky light of that darkened doleful day read 
the fate of the whalemen who had gone before me. Yes, 
Ishmael, the same fate may be thine. But somehow I grew 
merry again. Delightful inducements to embark, tine 
chance for promotion, it seems — aye, a stove boat will make 
me an immortal by brevet. Yes, there is death in this 
business of whaling — a speechlessly quick chaotic bundling 
of a man into Eternity. But what then? Methinks we 
have hugely mistaken this matter of Life and Death. Me- 
thinks that what they call my shadow here on earth is my 
true substance. Methinks that in looking at things spiritual, 
we are too much like oysters observing the sun through the 
water, and thinking that thick water the thinnest of air. 
Methinks my body is but the lees of my better being. In 
fact take my body who will, take it I say, it is not me. And 
therefore three cheers for Nantucket ; and come a stove 
boat and stove body when they will, for stave my soul, Jove 
himself cannot. 


CHAPTER VIII. 

THE PULPIT. 

I had not been seated very long ere a man of a certain 
venerable robustness entered ; immediately as the storm- 
pelted door flew back upon admitting him, a quick regard- 
ful eyeing of him by all the congregation, sufficiently at- 
tested that this fine old man was the chaplain. Yes, it 
was the famous Father Mapple, so called by the whalemen 
among whom he was a very great favourite. He had been a 
a sailor and a harpooner in his youth, but for many years 
past had dedicated his life to the ministry. At the time I 
now write of, Father Mapple was in the hardy winter of a 
healthy old age ; that sort of old age which seems merging into 
a second flowering youth, for among all the fissures of his 
wrinkles, there shone certain mild gleams of a newly develop- 
ing bloom — the spring verdure peeping forth even beneath 
February’s snow. No one having previously heard his his- 
tory, could for the first time behold Father Mapple without 


MOBY DICK. 


41 


the utmost interest, because there were certain engrafted 
clerical peculiarities about him, imputable to that adventu- 
rous maritime life he had led. When he entered I observed 
that he carried no umbrella, and certainly had not come in 
his carriage, for his tarpaulin hat ran down with melting 
sleet, and his great pilot cloth jacket seemed almost to drag 
him to the floor with the weight of the water it had ab- 
sorbed. However, hat and coat and overshoes were one by 
one removed, and hungup in a little space in an adjacent cor- 
ner : when, arrayed in a decent suit, he quietly approached 
the pulpit. 

Like most old-fashioned pulpits, it was a very lofty one, 
and since a regular stairs to such a height would, by its 
long angle with the floor, seriously contract the already 
small area of the chapel, the architect, it seemed, had acted 
upon the hint of Father Mapple, and finished the pulpit with- 
out stairs, substituting a perpendicular side ladder, like 
those used in mounting a ship from a boat at sea. The wife 
of a whaling captain had provided the chapel with a hand- 
some pair of red worsted man-ropes for this ladder, which, 
being itself nicely headed, and stained with a mahogany 
colour, the whole contrivance, considering what manner of 
chapel it was, seemed by no means in bad taste. Halting for 
an instant at the foot of the ladder, and with both hands 
grasping the ornamental knobs of the man-ropes, Father 
Mapple cast a look upwards, and then with a truly sailor 
like but still reverential dexterity, hand overhand, mounted 
the steps as if ascending the main-top of his vessel. 

The perpendicular parts of this side ladder, as is usually 
the case with swinging ones, were of cloth-covered rope, 
only the rounds were of wood, so that at every step there 
was a joint. At my first glimpse of the pulpit, it had not 
escaped me that however convenient fora ship, these joints 
in the present instance seemed unnecessary. For I was 
not prepared to see Father Mapple after gaining the 
height, slowly turn round, and stooping over the pulpit, 
deliberately drag up the ladder step by step, till the whole 
was deposited within, leaving him impregnable in his little 
Quebec. 

I pondered some time without fully comprehending the 
reason for this. Father Mapple enjoyed such a wide rep- 
utation for sincerity and sanctity, that I could not suspect 
him of courting notoriety by any mere tricks of the stage. 
No, thought I, there must be some sober reason for this 


42 


MOBY DICK. 


thing ; furthermore, it must symbolize something unseen. 
Can it be, then, that by that act of physical' isolation, he 
signifies his spiritual withdrawal for the time, from all 
outward worldly ties and connections ? Yes, for replenished 
with the meat and wine of the world, to the faithful man of 
God, this pulpit, I see, is a self-containing stronghold— a 
lofty Ehrenbreitstein, with a perennial well of water with- 
in the walls. 

But the side ladder was not the only strange feature of 
the place, borrowed from the chaplain’s former seafarings. 
Between the marble cenotaphs on either hand of the pulpit, 
the wall which formed its back was adorned with a large 
painting representing a gallant ship beating against a ter- 
rible storm off a lee coast of black rocks and snowy breakers. 
But high above the flying scud and dark-rolling clouds, 
there floated a little isle of sunlight, from which beamed 
forth an angel’s face ; and this bright face shed a distinct 
spot of radiance upon the ship’s tossed deck, something like 
that silver plate now inserted into the Victory’s plank where 
Nelson fell. “ Ah, noble ship,” the angel seemed to say, 
“ beat on, beat on, thou noble ship, and bear a hardy helm ; 
for lo ! the sun is breaking through ; the clouds are rolling 
off — serenest azure is at hand.” 

Nor was the pulpit itself without a trace of the same sea- 
taste that had achieved the ladder and the picture. Its 
panelled front was in the likeness of a ship’s bluff bows, and 
the Holy Bible rested on a projecting piece of scroll work, 
fashioned after a ship’s fiddle-headed beak. 

What could be more full of meaning ? — for the pulpit is 
ever this earth’s foremost part ; all the rest comes in its 
rear ; the pulpit leads the world. From thence it is the 
storm of God’s quick wrath is first descried, and the bow 
must bear the earliest brunt. From thence it is the God of 
breezes fair or foul is first invoked for favourable winds. 
Yes, the world’s a ship on its passage out, and not a voyage 
complete ; and the pulpit is its prow. 


MOBY DICK. 


43 


CHAPTER IX. 


THE SERMON. 

Father Mapple rose, and in a mild voice of unassuming 
authority ordered the scattered people to condense. “ Star- 
board gangway, there ! side away to larboard — larboard 
gangway to starboard ! Midships ! midships ! ” 

There was a low rumbling of heavy sea-boots among the 
benches, and a still slighter shuffling of women’s shoes, and 
all was quiet again, and every eye on the preacher. 

He paused a little ; then kneeling in the pulpit’s bows, 
folded his large brown hands across his chest, uplifted his 
closed eyes, and offered a prayer so deeply devout that he 
seemed kneeling and praying at the bottom of the sea. 

This ended, in prolonged solemn tones, like the continual 
tolling of a bell in a ship that is foundering at sea in a fog 
— in such tones he commenced reading the following hymn ; 
but changing his manner towards the concluding stanzas, 
burst forth with a pealing exultation and joy — 

“ The ribs and terrors in the whale, 

Arched over me a dismal gloom, 

While all God’s sun-lit waves rolled by, 

And lift me deepening down to doom. 

“ I saw the opening maw of hell, 

With endless pains and sorrows there; 

Which none but they that feel can tell — 

Oh, I was plunging to despair. 

“ In black distress, I called my God, 

When I could scarce believe him mine, 

He bowed his ear to my complaints — 

Np more the whale did me confine. 

“ With speed he flew to my relief, 

As on a radiant dolphin borne; 

Awful, yet bright, as lightning shone 
The face of my Deliverer God. 

“ My songs forever shall record 
That terrible, that joyful hour; 

I give the glory to my God, 

"His all the mercy and the power.” 


44 


MOBY DICK. 


Nearly all joined in singing this hymn, which swelled 
high above the howling of the storm. A brief pause ensued ; 
the preacher slowly turned over the leaves of the Bible, and 
at last, folding his hand down upon the proper page, said : 
“ Beloved shipmates, clinch the last verse of the fiist chapter 
of Jonah — “ And God had prepared a great fish to swallow 
up Jonah.” 

“ Shipmates, this book, containing only four chapters — 
four yarns — is one of the smallest strands in the mighty 
cable of the Scriptures. Yet what depths of the soul does 
Jonah’s deep sea-line sound ! what a pregnant lesson to us 
is this prophet ! What a noble thing is that canticle in the 
fish’s belly ! How billow-like and boisterously grand ! We 
feel the floods surging over us ; we sound with him to the 
kelpy bottom of the waters ; sea-weed and all the slime of 
the sea is about us ! But what is this lesson that the book 
of Jonah teaches ? Shipmates, it is a two-stranded lesson ; 
a lesson to us all as sinful men, and a lesson to me as a pilot 
of the living God. As sinful men, it is a lesson to us all, 
because it is a story of the sin, hard-heartedness, suddenly 
awakened fears, the swift punishment, repentance, prayers, 
and finally the deliverance and joy of Jonah. As with all 
sinners among men, the sin of this son of Amittai w^as in 
his wilful disobedience of the command of God — never mind 
now what that command was, or how conveyed — which he 
found a hard command. But all the things that God would 
have us do are hard for us to do — remember that — and hence, 
he oftener commands us than endeavours to persuade. 
And if we obey God, we must disobey ourselves ; and it is 
in this disobeying ourselves, wherein the hardness of obey- 
ing God consists. 

“ With this sin of disobedience in him, Jonah still further 
flouts at God, by seeking to flee from Him. He thinks that 
a ship made by men will carry him into countries where 
God does not reign, but only the Captains of this earth. He 
skulks about the wharves of Joppa, and seeks a ship that’s 
bound for Tarshish. There lurks, perhaps? a hitherto un- 
heeded meaning here. By all accounts Tarshish could have 
been no other city than the modern Cadiz. That’s the opin- 
ion of learned men. And where is Cadiz, shipmates ? 
Cadiz is in Spain ; as far by water, from Joppa, as Jonah 
could possibly have sailed in those ancient days, when the 
Atlantic was an almost unknown sea. Because Joppa, the 
modern Jaffa, shipmates, is on the most easterly coast of 


MOBY DICK. 


45 


the Mediterranean, the Syrian; and Tarshishor Cadiz more 
than two thousand miles to the westward from that, just 
outside the Straits of Gibraltar. See ye not then, shipmates, 
that Jonah sought to flee world- wide from God ? Miserable 
man ! Oh ! most contemptible and worthy of all scorn ; 
with slouched hat and guilty eye, skulking from his God ; 
prowling among the shipping like a vile burglar hastening 
to cross the seas. So disordered, self-condemning is his 
look, that had there been policemen in those days, Jonah, 
on the mere suspicion of something wrong, had been arrested 
ere he touched a deck. How plainly he’s a fugitive ! no 
baggage, not a hat-box, valise, or carpet-bag, — no friends 
accompany him to the wharf with their adieux. At last, 
after much dodging search, he finds the Tarshish ship 
receiving the last items of her cargo ; and as he steps on 
board to see its Captain in the cabin, all the sailors for the 
moment desist from hoisting in the goods, to mark the 
stranger’s evil eye. Jonah sees this ; but in vain he tries 
to look all ease and confidence ; in vain essays his wretched 
smile. Strong intuitions of the man assure the mariners 
he can be no innocent. In their gamesome but still serious 
way, one whispers to the other — 4 Jack, he’s robbed a widow; ’ 
or, 4 Joe, do you mark him; he’s a bigamist;’ or, ‘Harry 
lad, I guess he’s the adulterer that broke jail in old Gomor- 
rah, or belike, one of the missing murderers from Sodom.’ 
Another runs to read the bill that’s stuck against the spile 
upon the wharf to which the ship is moored, offering five 
hundred gold coins for the apprehension of a parricide, and 
containing a description of his person. He reads, and looks 
from Jonah to the bill ; while all his sympathetic shipmates 
now crowd round Jonah, prepared to lay their hands upon 
him. Frighted Jonah trembles, and summoning all his 
boldness to his face, only looks so much the more a coward. 
He will not confess himself suspected ; but that itself is 
strong suspicion. So he makes the best of it ; and when the 
sailors find him not to be the man that is advertised, they let 
him pass, and he descends into the cabin. 

44 4 Who’s there ? ’ cries the Captain at his busy desk, hur- 
riedly making out his papers for the Customs — 4 Who’s 
there ? ’ Oh ! how that harmless question mangles Jonah i 
For the instant he almost turns to flee again. But he rallies. 
4 1 seek a passage in the ship to Tarshish ; how soon sail ye, 
sir ? ’ Thus far the busy Captain had not looked up to 
Jonah, though the man now stands before him; but no 


46 


MOBY DICK. 


sooner does he hear that hollow voice, than he darts a scru- 
tinising glance. ‘ We sail with the next coming tide,’ at last 
he slowly answered, still intently eyeing him. ‘No sooner, 
sir ? ’ — ‘ Soon enough for any honest man that goes a pas- 
senger.’ Ha! Jonah! that’s another stab. But he swiftly 
calls away the Captain from that scent. ‘ I’ll sail with ye,’ 
— he says, — ‘ the passage money, how much is that ? — I’ll 
pay now.’ For it is particularly written, shipmates, as if it 
were a thing not to be overlooked in this history, ‘ that he 
paid the fare thereof ’ ere the craft did sail. And taken 
with the context, this is full of meaning. 

“Now Jonah’s Captain, shipmates, was one whose discern- 
ment detects crime in any, hut whose cupidity exposes it 
only in the penniless. In this world, shipmates, sin that pays 
its way can travel freely, and without a passport ; whereas 
Virtue, if a pauper, is stopped at all frontiers. So Jonah’s 
Captain prepares to test the length of Jonah’s purse, ere he 
judge him openly. He charges him thrice the usual sum; 
and it’s assented to. Then the Captain knows that Jonah 
is a fugitive ; but at the same time resolves to help a flight 
that paves its rear with gold. Yet when Jonah fairly takes 
out his purse, prudent suspicions still molest the Captain. 
He rings every coin to find a counterfeit. Not a forger, any 
way, he mutters ; and Jonah is put down for his passage. 
‘ Point out my state-room, sir,’ says Jonah now, ‘ I’m travel- 
weary ; I need sleep.’ ‘ Thou look’st like it,’ says the Cap- 
tain, ‘ there’s thy room.’ Jonah enters, and would lock the 
door, but the lock contains no key. Hearing him foolishly 
fumbling there, the Captain laughs lowly to himself, and 
mutters something about the doors of convicts’ cells being 
never allowed to be locked within. All dressed and dusty 
as he is, Jonah throws himself into his berth, and finds the 
little state-room ceiling almost resting on his forehead. The 
air is close, and Jonah gasps. Then, ip that contracted 
hole, sunk, too, beneath the ship’s water-line, Jonah feels 
the heralding presentiment of that stifling hour, when the 
whale shall hold him in the smallest of his bowel’s wards. 

“ Screwed at its axis against the side, a swinging lamp 
slightly oscillates in Jonah’s room ; and the ship, heeling 
over towards the wharf with the weight of the last bales 
received, the lamp, flame and all, though in slight motion, 
still maintains a permanent obliquity with reference to the 
room; though, in truth, infallibly straight itself, it but 
made obvious the false, lying levels among which it hung. 


MOB Y DICK. 


47 


The lamp alarms and frightens Jonah ; as lying in his berth 
his tormented eyes roll around the place, and this thus far 
successful fugitive finds no refuge for his restless glance. 
But that contradiction in the lamp more and more appalls 
him. The floor, the ceiling, and the side, are all awry. ‘ Oh ! 
so my conscience hangs in me ! ’ he groans, ‘ straight up- 
ward, so it burns ; but the chambers of my soul are all hr 
crookedness ! ’ 

“ Like one who after a night of drunken revelry hies to 
his bed, still reeling, but with conscience yet pricking him, 
as the plungings of the Roman race-horse but so much the 
more strike his steel tags into him ; as one who in that 
miserable plight still turns and turns in giddy anguish, 
praying God for annihilation until the fit be passed ; and 
at last amid the whirl of woe he feels, a deep stupor steals 
over him, as over the man who bleeds to death*, for con- 
science is the wound, and there’s naught to staunch it ; so, 
after sore wrestlings in his berth, Jonah’s prodigy of pon- 
derous misery drags him drowning down to sleep. 

“ And now the time of tide has come ; the ship casts off 
her cables ; and from the deserted wharf the uncheered 
ship for Tarshish, all careening, glides to sea. That ship, 
my friends, was the first of recorded smugglers ! the con- 
traband was Jonah. But the sea rebels ; he will not bear 
the wicked burden. A dreadful storm comes on, the ship 
is like to break. But now when the boatswain calls all 
hands to lighten her ; when boxes, bales, and jars are clat- 
tering overboard ; when the wind is shrieking, and the men 
are yelling, and every plank thunders with trampling feet 
right over Jonah’s head ; in all this raging tumult, Jonah 
sleeps his hideous sleep. He sees no black sky and raging 
sea, feels not the reeling timbers, and little hears he or 
heeds he the far rush of the mighty whale, which even now 
with open mouth is cleaving the seas after him. Aye, 
shipmates, Jonah was gone down into the sides of the ship 
— a berth in the cabin as I have taken it, and was fast 
asleep. But the frightened master comes to him, and 
shrieks in his dead ear, 4 What meanest thou, O sleeper ! 
arise ! ’ Startled from his lethargy by that direful cry, 
Jonah staggers to his feet, and stumbling to the deck, 
grasps a shroud, to look out upon the sea. But at that 
moment he is sprung upon by a panther billow leaping 
over the bulwarks. Wave after wave thus leaps into the 
ship, and finding no speedy vent runs roaring fore and aft, 


48 


MOBY DICK. 


till the mariners come nigh to drowning while yet afloa,t. 
And ever, as the white moon shows her affrighted face 
from the steep gullies in the blackness overhead, aghast 
Jonah sees the rearing bowsprit pointing high upward, but 
soon beat downward again towards the tormented deep. 

“Terrors upon terrors run shouting through his soul. 
In all his cringing attitudes, the God-fugitive is now too 
plainly known. The sailors mark him ; more and more 
certain grow their suspicions of him, and at last, fully to 
test the truth, by referring the whole matter to high 
Heaven, they fall to casting lots, to see for whose cause 
this great tempest was upon them. The lot is Jonah’s; 
that discovered, then how furiously they mob him with 
their questions. 4 What is thine occupation? Whence 
comest thou? Thy country? What people?’ But mark 
now, my shipmates, the behaviour of poor Jonah. The 
eager mariners but ask him who he is, and where from ; 
whereas, they not only receive an answer to those ques- 
tions, but likewise another answer to a question not put by 
them, but the unsolicited answer is forced from Jonah by 
the hard hand of God that is upon him. 

“ 4 1 am a Hebrew,’ he cries — and then — 4 1 fear the Lord 
the God of Heaven who hath made the sea and the dry 
land! ’ Fear him, O Jonah? Aye, well mightest thou fear 
the Lord God then ! Straightway, he now goes on to make 
a full confession; whereupon the mariners became more 
and more appalled, but still are pitiful. For when Jonah, 
not yet supplicating God for mercy, since he but too well 
knew the darkness of his deserts, — when wretched Jonah 
cries out to them to take him and cast him forth into the 
sea, for he knew that for his sake this great tempest was 
upon them; they mercifully turn from him, and seek by 
other means to save the ship. But all in vain ; the indig- 
nant gale howls louder ; then, with one hand raised invok- 
ingly to God, with the other they not unreluctantly lay hold 
of Jonah. 

And now behold Jonah taken up as an anchor and 
dropped into the sea ; when instantly an oily calmness floats 
out from the east, and the sea is still, as Jonah carries down 
the gale with him, leaving smooth water behind. He goes 
down in the whirling heart of such a masterless commotion 
that he scarce heeds the moment when he drops seething into 
the yawning jaws awaiting him; and the whale shoots- to 
all his ivory teeth, like so many white bolts, upon his prison. 


MOBY DICK. 


49 


Then Jonah prayed unto the Lord out of the fish’s belly. 
But observe his prayer, and learn a weighty lesson. For 
sinful as he is, J onah does not weep and wail for direct deliv- 
erance. He feels that his dreadful punishment is just. He 
leaves all his deliverance to God, contenting himself with this, 
that spite of all his pains and pangs, he will still look towards 
His holy temple. And here, shipmates, is true and faithful 
repentance ; not clamorous for pardon, but grateful for 
punishment. And how pleasing to God was this conduct 
in Jonah, is shown in the eventual deliverance of him from 
the sea and the whale. Shipmates, I do not place Jonah be- 
fore you to be copied for his sin, but I do place him before 
you as a model for repentance. Sin not ; but if you do, 
take heed to repent of it like Jonah.” 

While he was speaking these words, the howling of the 
shrieking, slanting storm without seemed to add new power 
to the preacher, who, when describing Jonah’s sea-storm, 
seemed tossed by a storm himself. His deep chest heaved 
as with a ground-swell ; his tossed arms seemed the warring 
elements at work ; and the thunders that rolled away from 
off his swarthy brow, and the light leaping from his eye, 
made all his simple hearers look on him with a quick fear 
that was strange to them. 

There now came a lull in his look, as he silently turned 
over the leaves of the Book once more ; and, at last, stand- 
ing motionless, with closed eyes, for the moment, seemed 
communing with God and himself. 

But again he leaned over towards the people, and bowing 
his head lowly, with an aspect of the deepest yet manliest 
humility, he spake these words : 

“ Shipmates, God has laid but one hand upon you ; both 
his hands press upon me. I have read ye by what murky 
light may be mine the lesson that Jonah teaches to all sin- 
ners ; and therefore to ye, and still more to me, for I am a 
greater sinner than ye/ And now how gladly would I come 
down from this mast-head and sit on the hatches there 
where you sit, and listen as you listen, while some one of 
you reads me that other and more awful lesson which Jonah 
teaches to me, as a pilot of the living God. How being an 
anointed pilot-prophet, or speaker of true things, and bidden 
by the Lord to sound those unwelcome truths in the ears of 
a wicked Nineveh, Jonah, appalled at the hostility he should 
raise, fled from his mission, and sought to escape his duty and 
his God by taking ship at Joppa. But God is everywhere ; 


50 


MOBY DICK. 


Tarshish lie never reached. As we have seen, God came 
upon him in the whale, and swallowed him down to living 
gulfs of doom, and with swift slantings tore him along 
‘into the midst of the seas,’ where the eddying depths 
sucked him ten thousand fathoms down, and ‘ the weeds 
were wrapped about his head,’ and all the watery world of 
woe howled over him. Yet even then beyond the reach cf 
any plummet — ‘ out of the belly of hell ’ — when the whale 
grounded upon the ocean’s utmost bones, even then, God 
heard the engulfed, repenting prophet when he cried. 
Then God spake unto the fish ; and from the shuddering 
cold and blackness of the sea, the whale came breeching up 
towards the warm and pleasant sun, and all the delights of 
air and earth; and ‘ vomited out Jonah upon the dry land ;’ 
when the word of the Lord came a second time ; and Jonah, 
bruised and beaten — his ears, like two sea-sliells, still multitu- 
dinously murmuring of the ocean — Jonah did the Almighty’s 
bidding. And what was that, shipmates ? To preach the 
Truth to the face of Falsehood ! That w^as it ! 

“ This, shipmates, this is that other lesson ; and woe to that 
pilot of the living God who slights it. Woe to him whom 
this world charms from Gospel duty ! Woe to him who 
seeks to pour oil upon the waters when God has brewed 
them into a gale ! Woe to him who seeks to please rather 
than to appal! Woe to him whose good name is more to 
him than goodness ! Woe to him who, in this world, courts 
not dishonour ! Woe to him who would not be true, even 
though to be false were salvation ! Yea, woe to him who, 
as the great Pilot Paul has it, while preaching to others is 
himself a castaway ! ” 

He dropped and fell away from himself for a moment ; 
then lifting his face to them again, showed a deep joy in 
his eyes, as he cried out with a heavenly enthusiasm, — “ But 
oh ! shipmates ! on the starboard hand of every woe, there 
is a sure delight ; and higher the top of that delight, than 
the bottom of the woe is deep. Is not the main-truck higher 
than the kelson is low ? Delight is to him — a far, far up- 
ward, and inward delight — who against the proud gods and 
commodores of this earth, ever stands forth his own inex- 
orable self. Delight is to him whose strong arms yet sup- 
port him, Avhen the ship of this base treacherous world has 
gone down beneath him. Delight is to him, who gives no 
quarter in the truth, and kills, btirns, and destroys all sin 
though he pluck it out from under the robes of Senators and 


MOBY DICK. 


51 


Judges. Delight— top-gallant delight is to him, who ac- 
knowledges no law or lord, hut the Lord his God, and is only 
a patriot to heaven. ‘Delight is to him, whom all the waves 
of the billows of the seas of the boisterous mob can never 
shake from this sure Keel of the Ages. And eternal delight 
and deliciousness will be his, who coming to lay him down, 
can say with his final breath— O Father !— chiefly known to 
me by Thy rod — mortal or immortal, here I die. I have 
striven to be Thine, more than to be this world’s, or mine 
own. Yet this is nothing; I leave eternity to Thee; for 
what is man that he should live out the lifetime of his 
God?” 

lie said no more, but slowly waving a benediction cov- 
ered his face with his hands, and so remained kneeling, 
till all the people had departed, and he was left alone in the 
place. 


CHAPTER X. 

A BOSOM FRIEND. 

Returning to the Spouter-Inn from the Chapel, I found 
Queequeg there quite alone ; he liavingleft the Chapelbefore 
the benediction some time. He was sitting on a bench before 
the fire, with his feet on the stove hearth, and in one hand 
was holding close up to his face that little negro idol of his ; 
peering hard into its face, and with a jack-knife gently 
whittling away at its nose, meanwhile humming to himself 
in his heathenish way. 

But being now interrupted, he put up theimage; and pretty 
soon, going to the table, took up a large book there, and 
placing it on his lap began counting the pages with deliberate 
regularity ; at every fiftieth page — as 1 fancied — stopping a 
moment, looking vacantly around him, and giving utterance 
to a long-drawn gurgling whistle of astonishment. He w’ould 
then begin again at the next fifty ; seeming to commence at 
number one each time, as though he could not count more 
than fifty, and it was only by such a large number of fifties 
being found together, that his astonishment at the multi- 
tude of pages was excited. 

With much interest I sat watching him. Savage though 


52 


MOBY DICK. 


he was, and hideously marred about the face — at least . to 
my taste — his countenance yet had a* something in it which 
was by no means disagreeable. You cannot bide the soul. 
Through all his unearthly tattooings, I thought I saw the 
traces of a simple honest heart ; and in his large, deep eyes, 
fiery black und bold, there seemed tokens of a spirit that 
would dare a thousand devils. And besides all this, there 
was a certain lofty bearing about the Pagan, which even his 
uncouthness could not altogether maim. He looked like a 
man who had never cringed and never had had a creditor. 
Whether it was, too, that his head being shaved, his fore- 
head was drawn out in freer and brighter relief, and looked 
more expansive than it otherwise would, this I will not ven- 
ture to decide ; but certain it was his head was plirenologi- 
cally an excellent one. It may seem ridiculous, but it re- 
minded me of General Washington’s head, as seen in the 
popular busts of him. It had the same long regularly graded 
retreating slope from above the brows, which were likewise 
very projecting, like two long promontories thickly wooded 
on top. Queequeg was George Washington cannibalisti- 
cally developed. 

Whilst I was thus closely scanning him, half-pretending 
meanwhile to be looking out at the storm from the case- 
ment, he never heeded my presence, never troubled himself 
with so much as a single glance ; but appeared wholly oc- 
cupied with counting the pages of the marvellous book. 
Considering how sociably we had been sleeping together 
the night previous, and especially considering the affec- 
tionate arm I had found thrown over me upon waking in 
the morning, I thought this indifference of his very strange. 
But savages are strange beings ; at times you do not know 
exactly how to take them. At first they are overawing; 
their calm self-collectedness of simplicity seems a Socratic 
wisdom. I had noticed also that Queequeg never consorted 
at all, or but very little, with the other seamen in the inn. 
He made no advances whatever ; appeared to have no desire 
to enlarge the circle of his acquaintances. Ail this struck me 
as mighty singular ; yet upon second thoughts, there was 
something almost sublime in it. Here w^as a man some 
twenty thousand miles from home, by the way of Cape Horn 
that is — which was the only way he could get there — thrown 
among peopie as strange to him as though he were in the 
planet Jupiter ; and yet he seemed entirely at his ease ; pre- 
serving the utmost serenity ; content with his own compan- 


MOBY DICK. 


53 


ionship ; always equal to himself. Surely this was a touch 
of fine philosophy ; though no doubt he had never heard 
there was such a thing as that. But, perhaps, to be true 
philosophers, we mortals should not be conscious of so 
living or so striving. So soon as I hear that such or such 
a man gives himself out for a philosopher, I conclude that, 
like the dyspetic old woman, he must have “ broken his 
digester.” 

As I sat there in that now lonely room ; the fire burning 
low, in that mild stage when, after its first intensity has 
warmed the air, it then only glows to be looked at ; the even 
ing shades and phantoms gatlieringround the casements, and 
peering in upon us silent, solitary twain ; the storm boom- 
ing without in solemn swells ; I began to be sensible of 
strange feelings. I felt a melting in me. No more my 
splintered heart and maddened hand were turned against 
the wolfish world. This soothing savage had redeemed it. 
There he sat, his very indifference speaking a nature in 
which there lurked no civilised hypocrisies and bland de- 
ceits. Wild he was ; a very sight of sights to see ; yet I 
began to feel myself mysteriously drawn towards him. 
And those same things that would have repelled most 
others, they were the very magnets that thus drew me. 
I’ll try a pagan friend, thought I, since Christian kindness 
has proved but hollow courtesy. I drew my bench near 
him, and made some friendly signs and hints, doing my 
best to talk with him meanwhile. At first he little noticed 
these advances ; but presently, upon my referring to his 
last night’s hospitalities, he made out to ask me whether 
’we were again to be bedfellows. I told him yes ; whereat 
I thought he looked pleased, perhaps a little complimented. 

We then turned over the book together, and I endeavoured 
to explain to him the purpose of the printing, and the mean- 
ing of the few pictures that were in it. Thus I soon en- 
gaged his interest; and from that we went to jabbering the 
best we could about the various outer sights to be seen in 
this famous town. Soon I proposed a social smoke ; and, 
producing his pouch and tomahawk, he quietly offered me 
a puff. And then we sat exchanging puffs from that wild 
pipe of his, and keeping it regularly passing between us. 

If there yet lurked any ice of indifference towards me in 
the Pagan’s breast, this pleasant, genial smoke we had, 
soon thawed it out, and left us cronies. He seemed to take 
to me quite as naturally and unbiddenly as I to him ; and 


54 


MOBY T>ICK. 


when our smoke was over, he pressed his forehead against 
mine, clasped me round the waist, and said that henceforth 
we were married ; meaning, in his country’s phrase, that 
we were bosom friends ; he would gladly die for me, if need 
should be. In a countryman, this sudden flame of friend- 
ship would have seemed far too premature, a thing to be 
much distrusted ; but in this simple savage ihose old rules 
would not apply. 

After supper, and another social chat and smoke, we 
went to our room together. He made me a present of his 
embalmed head ; took out his enormous tobacco wallet, 
and groping under the tobacco, drew out some thirty dol- 
lars in silver ; then spreading them on the table, and me- 
chanically dividing them into two equal portions, pushed one 
of them towards me, and said it was mine. I was going to 
remonstrate; but he silenced me by pouring them into 
my trowsers’ pockets. I let them stay. He then went 
about his evening prayers, took out his idol, and removed 
the paper fireboard. By certain signs and symptoms, I 
thought he seemed anxious for me to join him ; but well 
knowing what was to follow, I deliberated a moment 
whether, in case he invited me, I would comply or other- 
wise. 

-I was a good Christian ; born and bred in the bosom of 
the infallible Presbyterian Church. How then could I 
unite with this wild idolator in worshipping his piece of 
wood? But what is worship? thought I. Do you suppose 
now, Ishmael that the magnanimous God of heaven and 
earth — pagans and all included — can possibly be jealous of 
an insignificant bit of black wood ? Impossible ! But what 
is worship ? — to do the will of God — that is worship. And 
what is the will of God? — to do to my fellow man what I 
would have my fellow man to do to me — that is the will of 
God. Now, Queequeg is my fellow man. And what do I 
* wish that this Queequeg would do to me ? Why, unite 
with me in my particular Presbyterian form of worship. 
Consequently, I must then unite with him in his ; ergo, I 
must turn idolator. So I kindled the shavings ; helped 
prop up the innocent little idol ; offered him burnt biscuit 
with Queequeg ; salamed before him twice or thrice ; kissed 
his nose ; and that done, we undressed and went to bed, at 
peace with our own consciences and all the world. But 
we did not go to sleep without some little chat. 

How it is I know not ; but there is no place like a bed 


MOBY DICK. 


55 


for confidential disclosures between friends. Man and wife, 
they say, there open the very bottom of their souls to each 
other ; and some old couples often lie and chat over old 
times till nearly morning. Thus, then, in our hearts’ 
honeymoon, lay I and Queequeg — a cosy, loving pair. 


CHAPTER XI. 

NIGHTGOWN. 

We had lain thus in bed, chatting and napping at short 
intervals, and Queequeg now and then affectionately throw- 
ing his brown tattooed legs over mine, and then drawing 
them back; so entirely sociable and free and easy were 
we ; when at last by reason of our confabulations, what 
little nappishness remained in us altogether departed, and 
we felt like getting up again, though daybreak was yet 
some way down the future. 

Yes, we became very wakeful ; so much so that our recum- 
bent position began to grow wearisome, and by little and 
little we found ourselves sitting up; the clothes well 
tucked around us, leaning against the head-board with 
our four knees drawn up close together, and our two noses 
bending over them, as if our kneepans were warming-pans. 
We felt very nice and snug, the more so since it was so 
chilly out of doors ; indeed out of bed-clothes too, seeing 
that there was no fire in the room. The more so, I say, 
because truly to enjoy bodily warmth, some small part of 
you must be cold, for there is no quality in this world that 
is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in 
itself. If you flatter yourself that you are all over comfort- 
able, and have been so a long time, then you cannot be said 
to be comfortable any more. But if, like Queequeg and me 
in the bed, the tip of your nose or the crown of your head 
be slightly chilled, why then, indeed, in general conscious- 
ness you feel most delightfully and unmistakably warm. 
For this reason a sleeping apartment should never be fur- 
nished with a fire, which is one of the luxurious discomforts 
of the rich. For the height of this sort of deliciousness is 
to have nothing but the blanket between you and your 


56 


MOBY DICK. 


snugness and the cold of the outer air. Then there you 
lie like the one warm spark in the heart of an arctic crystal. 

We had been sitting in this crouching manner for some 
time, when all at once I thought I would open my eyes ; for 
when between sheets, whether by day or by night, and 
whether asleep or awake, I have a way of always keeping 
my eyes shut, in order the more to concentrate the snugness 
of being in bed. Because no man can ever feel his own 
identity aright except his eyes be closed ; as if darkness 
were indeed the proper element of our essences, though 
light be more congenial to our clayey part. Upon opening 
my eyes then, and coming out of my own pleasant and 
self-created darkness into the imposed and coarse outer 
gloom of the unilluminated twelve-o’clock-at-night, I experi- 
enced a disagreeable revulsion. Nor did I at all object to 
the hint from Queequeg that perhaps it were best to strike 
a light, seeing that we were so wide awake ; and besides he 
felt a strong desire to have a few quiet puffs from his 
tomahawk. Be it said, that though I had felt such a strong 
repugnance to his smoking in the bed the night before, yet 
see how elastic our stiff prejudices grow when love once 
comes to bend them. For now I liked nothing better than 
to have Queequeg smoking by me, even in bed, because he 
seemed to be full of such serene household joy then. I no 
more felt unduly concerned for the landlord’s policy of 
insurance. I was only alive to the condensed confidential 
comfortableness of sharing a pipe and a blanket with a 
real friend. With our shaggy jackets drawn about our shoul- 
ders, we now passed the tomahawk from one to the other, till 
slowly there grew over us a blue hanging tester of smoke, 
illuminated by the flame of the new-lit lamp. 

Whether it was that this undulating tester rolled the 
savage away to far distant scenes, I know not, but he now 
spoke of his native island ; and, eager to hear his history, 
I begged him to go on and tell it. He gladly complied. 
Though at the time I but ill comprehended not a few of his 
words, yet subsequent disclosures, when I had become more 
familiar with his broken phraseology, now enable me to 
present the whole story such as it may prove in the mere 
skeleton I give. 


MOBY DICK . 


57 


CHAPTER XII. 

BIOGRAPHICAL. 

Qtteequeg was a native of Kokovoko, an island far away 
to the W est and South. It is not down in any map ; true 
places never are. 

When a new hatched savage running wild about his 
native woodlands in a grass clout, followed by the nibbling 
goats, as if he were a green sapling ; even then, in Queequeg’ s 
ambitious soul, lurked a strong desire to see something 
more of Christendom than a specimen whaler or two. His 
father was a High Chief, a King ; his uncle a High Priest ; 
and on the maternal side he boasted aunts who were the 
wives of unconquerable warriors. There was excellent 
blood in his veins — royal stuff ; though sadly vitiated, I fear, 
by the cannibal propensity he nourished in his untutored 
youth. 

A Sag Harbour ship visited his father’s bay, and Queequeg 
sought a passage to Christian lands. But the ship, having 
her full complement of seamen, spurned his suit ; and not 
all the King his father’s influence could prevail. But 
Queequeg vowed a vow. Alone in his canoe, he paddled off 
to a distant strait, which he knew the ship must pass 
through when she quitted the island. On one side was a 
coral reef ; on the other a low tongue of land, covered with 
mangrove thickets that grew out into the water. Hiding 
his canoe, still afloat, among these thickets, with its prow 
seaward, he sat down in the stern, paddle low in hand ; 
and when the ship was gliding by, like a flash he darted 
out ; gained her side ; with one backward dash of his foot 
capsised and sank his canoe ; climbed up the chains ; and 
throwing himself at full length upon the deck, grappled a 
ring-bolt there, and swore not to let it go, though hacked in 
pieces. 

In vain the captain threatened to throw him overboard ; 
suspended a cutlass over his naked wrists ; Queequeg was 
the son of a King, and Queequeg budged not. Struck by 
his desperate dauntlessness, and his wild desire to visit 


58 


Mon Y DICK. 


Christendom, the captain at last relented, and told him he 
might make himself at home. But this fine young savage— 
this sea Prince of Wales, never saw the captain’s cabin. 
They put him down among the sailors, and made a whale- 
man of him. But like Czar Peter content to toil in the 
shipyards of foreign cities, Queequeg disdained no seeming 
ignominy, if thereby he might happily gain the power of 
enlightening his untutored countrymen. For at bottom — 
so he told me — he was actuated by a profound desire to 
learn among the Christians, the arts whereby to make his 
people still happier than they were ; and more than that, 
still better than they were. But, alas ! the practices of 
whalemen soon convinced him that even Christians could be 
both miserable and wicked ; infinitely more so, than all 
his father’s heathens. Arrived at last in old Sag Harbour ; 
and seeing what the sailors did there ; and then going on 
to Nantucket, and seeing how they spent their wages 
in that place also, poor Queequeg gave it up for lost. 
Thought he, it’s a wicked world in all meridians ; I’ll die a 
pagan. 

And thus an old idolator at heart, he yet lived among 
these Christians, wore their clothes, and tried to talk their 
gibberish. Hence the queer ways about him, though now 
some time from home. 

By hints, I asked him whether he did not propose going 
back, and having a coronation ; since he might now consider 
his father dead and gone, he being very old and feeble at 
the last accounts. He answered no, not yet ; and added 
that he was fearful Christianity, or rather Christians, had 
unfitted him for ascending the pure and undefiled throne of 
thirty pagan Kings before him. But by and by, he said, he 
would return, — as soon as he felt himself baptised again. 
For the nonce, however, he proposed to sail about, and sow 
his wild oats in all four oceans. They had made a liar- 
pooneer of him, and that barbed iron was in lieu of a sceptre 
now. 

I asked him what might be his immediate purpose, touch- 
ing his future movements. He answered, to go to sea 
again, in his old vocation. Upon this, I told him that 
whaling was my own design, and informed him of my inten- 
tion to sail out of Nantucket, as being the most promising 
port for an adventurous whaleman to embark from. lie 
at once resolved to accompany me to that island, ship 
aboard the same vessel, get into the same watch, the same 


MOBY DICK . 


59 


boat, the same mess with me, in short to share my every 
hap ; with both my hands in his, boldly dip into the Potluck 
of both worlds. To all this I joyously assented ; for besides 
the affection I now felt for Queequeg, he was an experi- 
enced harpooneer, and as such, could not fail to be of great 
usefulness to one, who, like me, was wholly ignorant of the 
mysteries of whaling, though well acquainted with the sea, 
as known to merchant seamen. 

His story being ended with his pipe’s last dying puff, 
Queequeg embraced me, pressed his forehead against mine, 
and blowing out the light, we rolled over from each other, 
this way and that, and very soon were sleeping. 


CHAPTER XIII. 

WHEELBARROW. 

Next morning, Monday, after disposing of the embalmed 
head to a barber, for a block, I settled my own and com- 
rade’s bill; using, however, my comrade’s money. The 
grinning landlord, as well as the boarders, seemed amaz- 
ingly tickled at the sudden friendship which had sprung 
up between me and Queequeg — especially as Peter Coffin’s 
cock-and-bull stories about him had previously so much 
alarmed me concerning the very person whom I now com- 
panied with. 

We borrowed a wheelbarrow, and embarking our things, 
including my own poor carpet-bag, and Queequeg’s canvas 
sack and hammock, away we went down to the “ Moss,” 
the little Nantucket packet schooner moored at the wharf. 
As we were going along the people started ; not at Quee- 
queg so much — for they were used to seeing cannibals like 
him in their streets, — but at seeing him and me upon such 
confidential terms. But we heeded them not, going along 
wheeling the barroAV by turns, and Queequeg now and then 
stopping to adjust the sheath on his harpoon barbs. I 
asked him why he carried such a troublesome thing with 
him ashore, and whether all whaling ships did not find 
their own harpoons. To this, in substance, he replied, that 
though what I hinted was true enough, yet he had a par- 


60 


MOBY DICK. 


ticular affection for his own harpoon, because it was of as- 
sured stuff, well tried in many a mortal combat, and deeply 
intimate with the hearts of whales. In short, like many 
inland reapers and mowers, who go into the farmers’ 
meadows armed with their own scythes — though in no 
wise obliged to furnish them— even so, Queequeg, for his 
own private reasons, preferred his own harpoon. 

Shifting the barrow from my hand to his, he told me a 
funny story about the first wheelbarrow he had ever seen. 
It was in Sag Harbour. The owners of his ship, it seems, 
had lent him one, in which to carry his heavy chest to his 
boarding-house. Not to seem ignorant about the thing — 
though in truth he was entirely so, concerning the precise 
way in which to manage the barrow — Queequeg puts his 
chest upon it ; lashes it fast ; and then shoulders the bar- 
row and marches up the wharf. “ Why,” said I, “ Quee- 
queg, you might have known better than that, one would 
think. Didn’t the people laugh ? ” 

Upon this, he told me another story. The people of his 
island of Rokovoko, it seems, at their wedding feasts express 
the fragrant water of young cocoanuts into a large stained 
calabash like a punchbowl; and this punchbowl always 
forms the great central ornament on the braided mat where 
the feast is held. Now a certain grand merchant-ship once 
touched at Rokovoko, and its commander — from all accounts, 
a very stately punctilious gentleman, at least for a sea 
captain — this commander w T as invited to the wedding feast 
of Queequeg’s sister, a pretty young princess just turned of 
ten. Well; when all the wedding guests were assembled 
at the bride’s bamboo cottage, this Captain marches in, and 
being assigned the post of honour, places himself over 
against the punchbowl, and between the High Priest and 
his majesty the King, Queequeg’s father. Grace being said, 
— for those people have their grace as well as we — though 
Queequeg told me that unlike us, who at such times look 
downwards to our platters, they, on the contrary, copying 
the ducks, glance upwards to the great Giver of all feasts 
— Grace, I say, being said, the High Priest opens the ban- 
quet by the immemorial ceremony of the island : that is, 
dipping his consecrated and consecrating fingers into the 
bowl before the blessed beverage circulates. Seeing himself 
placed next the Priest, and noting the ceremony, and think- 
ing himself — being Captain of a ship — as having plain 
precedence over a mere island King, especially in the 


MOBY DICK. 


61 


King’s own house — the Captain coolly proceeds to wash his 
hands in the punchbowl ; — taking it I suppose for a huge 
finger-glass. “ Now,” said Queequeg, “ what you tink 
now ? — Didn’t our people laugh ? ” 

At last, passage paid, and luggage safe, we stood on hoard 
the schooner. Hoisting sail, it glided down the Acushnet 
river. On one side, New Bedford rose in terraces of streets, 
their ice-covered trees all glittering in the clear, cold air. 
Huge hills and mountains of casks on casks were piled upon 
her wharves, and side by side the world- wandering whale 
ships lay silent and safely moored at last ; while from others 
came a sound of carpenters and coopers, with blended noises of 
fires and forges to melt the pitch, all betokening that new 
cruises were on the start ; that one most perilous and long 
voyage ended, only begins a second ; and a second ended, 
only begins a third, and so on, forever and for aye. Such 
is the endlessness, yea, the intolerableness of all earthly 
effort. 

Gaining the more open water, the bracing breeze waxed 
fresh ; the little Moss tossed the quick foam from her bows, 
as a young colt his snortings. How I snuffed that Tartar 
air ! — how I spurned that turnpike earth ! — that common 
highway all over dented with the marks of slavish heels 
and hoofs ; and turned me to admire the magnanimity of 
the sea which will permit no records. 

At the same foam-fountain, Queequeg seemed to drink 
and reel with me. His dusky nostrils swelled apart ; he 
showed his filed and pointed teeth. On, on we flew ; and 
our offing gained, the Moss did homage to the blast ; ducked 
and dived her bows as a slave before the Sultan. Side- 
ways leaning, we sideways darted ; every ropeyarn ting- 
ling like a wire ; the two tall masts buckling like Indian 
canes in land tornadoes. So full of this reeling scene were 
we, as we stood by the plunging bowsprit, that for some 
time we did not notice the jeering glances of the passengers, 
a lubber-like assembly, who marvelled that two fellow- 
beings should be so companionable ; as though a white man 
were anything more dignified than a whitewashed negro. 
But there were some boobies and bumpkins there, who, by 
their intense greenness, must have come from the heart and 
centre of all verdure. Queequeg caught one of these young 
.saplings mimicking him behind his back. I thought the 
bumpkin’s hour of doom was come. Dropping his harpoon, 
the brawny savage caught him in his arms, and by an almost 


62 


MOB Y BIL K. 


miraculous dexterity and strength sent him high up bodily 
into the air; then slightly tapping his stern in mid-somerset, 
the fellow landed with bursting lungs upon his feet, while 
Queequeg, turning his back upon him, lighted his tomahawk 
pipe and passed it to me for a puff. 

“Capting! Capting!” yelled the bumpkin, running to- 
wards that officer ; “ Capting, Capting, here’s the devil.” 

“ Hallo, you sir,” cried the Captain, a gaunt rib of the sea, 
stalking up to Queequeg, “ what in thunder do you mean 
by that? Don’t you know you might have killed that 
chap ? ” 

“ What him say ? ” said Queequeg, as he mildly turned 
to me. 

“ He say,” said I, “ that you came near kill-e that man 
there,” pointing to the still shivering greenhorn. 

“ Kill-e,” cried Queequeg, twisting liis tattooed face into 
an unearthly expression of disdain, “ ah ! him bevy small-e 
fish-e ; Queequeg no kill-e so small-e fish-e ; Queequeg kill-e 
big whale ! ” 

“ Look you,” roared the Captain, “ I’ll kill-e yow, you can- 
nibal, if you try any more of your tricks aboard here ; so 
mind your eye.” 

But it so happened just then, that it was high time for 
the Captain to mind his own eye. The prodigious strain 
upon the main-sail had parted the weather-sheet, and the 
tremendous boom was now flying from side to side, com- 
pletely sweeping the entire afterpart of the deck. The 
poor fellow whom Queequeg had handled so roughly, was 
swept overboard ; all hands were in a panic ; and to attempt 
snatching at the boom to stay it, seemed madness. It flew 
from right to left, and back again, almost in one ticking of 
a watch, and every instant seemed on the point of snapping 
into splinters. Nothing was done, and nothing seemed 
capable of being done ; those on deck rushed towards the 
bows, and stood eyeing the boom as if it were the lower jaw 
of an exasperated whale. In the midst of this consterna- 
tion, Queequeg dropped deftly to his knees, and crawling 
under the path of the boom, whipped hold of a rope, secured 
one end to the bulwarks, and then flinging the other like a 
lasso, caught it round the boom as it swept over his head, 
and at the next jerk, the spar was that way trapped, and 
all was safe. The schooner was run into the wind, and 
while the hands were clearing away the stern boat, Quee- 
queg, stripped to the waist, darted from the side with a 


MOBY DICK. 


6 ; 


long living arc of a leap. For three minutes or more he 
was seen swimming like a dog, throwing his long arms 
straight out before him, and by turns revealing his brawny 
shoulders through the freezing foam. I looked at the grand 
and glorious fellow, but saw no one to be saved. The 
greenhorn had gone down. Shooting himself perpendicu- 
larly from the water, Queequeg now took an instant’s 
glance around him, and seeming to see just how matters 
were, dived down and disappeared. A few minutes more 
and he rose again, one arm still striking out, and with th 
other dragging a lifeless form. The boat soon picked thei 
up. The poor bumpkin was restored. All hands vote 
Queequeg a noble trump ; the captain begged his pardoi 
From that hour I clove to Queequeg like a barnacle ; yer 
till poor Queequeg took his last long dive. 

Was there ever such unconsciousness? He did not seem 
to think that he at all deserved a medal from the Humane 
and Magnanimous Societies. He only asked for water — • 
fresh water — something to wipe the brine off ; that done, he 
put on dry clothes, lighted his pipe, and leaning against the 
bulwarks, and mildly eyeing those around him, seemed to 
be saying to himself — “ It’s a mutual, joint-stock world, in 
all meridians. We cannibals must help these Christians.” 


CHAPTER XIV. 

NANTUCKET. 

Nothing more happened on the passage worthy the men- 
tioning ; so, after a fine run, we safely arrived in Nantucket. 

Nantucket ! Take out your map and look at it. See what 
a real corner of the world it occupies ; how it stands there, 
away off shore, more lonely than the Eddystone lighthouse. 
Look at it— a mere hillock, and elbow of sand ; all beach, 
without a background. There is more sand there than you 
would use in twenty years as a substitute for blotting paper. 
Some gamesome wights will tell you that they have to plant 
weeds there, they don’t grow naturally ; that they import 
Canada thistles ; that they have to send beyond seas for a 
spile to stop a leak in an oil cask ; that pieces of wood in 


64 


MOBY DICK. 


Nantucket are carried about like bits of the true cross in 
Rome ; that people there plant toadstools before their 
houses, to get under the shade in summer time ; that one 
blade of grass makes an oasis, three blades in a day’s walk 
a prairie ; that they wear quicksand shoes, something like 
Laplander snowshoes ; that they are so shut up, belted 
about, every way inclosed, surrounded, and made an utter 
island of by the ocean, that to their very chairs and tables 
small clams will sometimes be found adhering, as to the 
backs of sea turtles. But these extravaganzas only show 
that Nantucket is no Illinois. 

Look now at the wondrous traditional story of how this 
island was settled by the red-men. Thus goes the legend. 
In olden times an eagle swooped down upon the New Eng- 
land coast, and carried off an infant Indian in his talons. 
With loud lament the parents saw their child borne out of 
sight over the wide waters. They resolved to follow in the 
same direction. Setting out in their canoes, after a perilous 
passage they discovered the island, and there they found 
an empty ivory casket, — the poor little Indian’s skeleton. 

What wonder, then, that these Nantucketers, born on a 
beach, should take to the sea for a livelihood ! They first 
caught crabs and quohogs in the sand ; grown bolder, they 
waded out with nets for mackerel ; more experienced, they 
pushed off in boats and captured cod ; and at last, launch- 
ing a navy of great ships on the sea, explored this watery 
world ; put an incessant belt of circumnavigation round it ; 
peeped in at Behring’s Straits ; and in all seasons and all 
oceans declared everlasting war with the mightiest animated 
mass that has survived the flood ; most monstrous and most 
mountainous ! That Himmalehan, salt-sea Mastodon, clothed 
with such portentousness of unconscious power, that his 
very panics are more to be dreaded than his most fearless 
and malicious assaults ! 

And thus have these naked Nantucketers, these sea-her- 
mits, issuing from their ant-hill in the sea, overrun and 
conquered the watery world like so many Alexanders ; 
parcelling out among them the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian 
oceans, as the three pirate powers did Poland. Let America 
add Mexico to Texas, and pile Cuba upon Canada ; let the 
English overswarm all India, and hang out their blazing 
banner from the sun ; two thirds of this terraqueous globe 
are the Nantucketer’s. For the sea is his ; he owns it, as 
Emperors own empires ; other seamen having but a right of 


MOBY DICK. 


65 


way through it. Merchant ships are but extension bridges ; 
armed ones but floating forts ; even pirates and privateers, 
though following the sea as highwaymen the road, they but 
plunder other ships, other fragments of the land like them- 
selves, without seeking to draw their living from the bot- 
tomless deep itself. The Nantucketer, he alone resides and 
riots on the sea ; he alone, in Bible language, goes down to 
it in ships ; to and fro ploughing it as his own special plan- 
tation. There is his home ; there lies his business, which a 
Noah’s flood would not interrupt, though it overwhelmed 
all the millions in China. He lives on the sea, as prairie 
cocks in the prairie ; he hides among the waves, he climbs 
them as chamois hunters climb the Alps. For years he 
knows not the land ; so that when he comes to it at last, it 
smells like another world, more strangely than the moon 
would to an Earthsman. With the landless gull, that at 
sunset folds her wings and is rocked to sleep between bil- 
lows ; so at nightfall, the Nantucketer, out of sight of land, 
furls his sails, and lays him to his rest, while under his very 
pillow rush herds of walruses and whales. 


CHAPTER XV. 

CHOWDER. 

It was quite late in the evening when the little Moss 
came snugly to anchor, and Queequeg and I went ashore ; 
so we could attend to no business that day, at least none 
but a supper and a bed. The landlord of the Spouter-Inn 
had recommended us to his cousin Hosea Hussey of the Try 
Pots, whom he asserted to be the proprietor of one of the best 
kept hotels in all Nantucket, and moreover he had assured us 
that cousin Hosea, as he called him, was famous for his 
chowders. In sort, he plainly hinted that we could not 
possibly do better than try pot-luck at the Try Pots. But 
the directions he had given us about keeping a yellow ware- 
house on our starboard hand till we opened a white church 
to the larboard, and then keeping that on the larboard hand 
till we made a corner three points to the starboard, and 
that done, then ask the first man we met where the 
place was : these crooked directions of his very much puzzled 


66 


MOBY DICK. 


us at first, especially as, at the outset, Queequeg insisted 
that the yellow warehouse — our first point of departure — 
must be left on the larboard hand, whereas I had under- 
stood Peter Coffin to say it was on the starboard. How- 
ever, by dint of beating about a little in the dark, and now 
and then knocking up a peaceable inhabitant to inquire the 
way, we at last came to something which there was no 
mistaking. 

Two enormous wooden pots painted black, and suspended 
by asses’ ears, swung from the cross-trees of an old top- 
mast, planted in front of an old doorway. The horns of 
the crosstrees were sawed off on the other side, so that this 
old top-mast looked not a little like a gallows. Perhaps I 
was over sensitive to such impressions at the time, but I 
could not help staring at this gallows with a vague mis- 
giving. A sort of crick was in my neck as I gazed up to 
the two remaining horns ; yes, two of them, one for Quee- 
queg, and one for me. It’s ominous, thinks I. A Coffin my 
Innkeeper upon landing in my first whaling port ; tomb- 
stones staring at me in the whalemen’s chapel ; and here a 
gallows ! and a pair of prodigious black pots too ! Are these 
last throwing out oblique hints touching Tophet ? 

I was called from these reflections by the sight of a 
freckled woman with yellow hair and a yellow gown, stand- 
ing in the porch of the inn, under a dull red lamp swinging 
there, that looked much like an injured eye, and carrying 
on a brisk scolding with a man in a purple woollen shirt. 

“ Get along with ye,” said she to the man, “ or I’ll be 
combing ye ! ” 

“ Come on, Queequeg,” said I, “ all right. There’s Mrs. 
Hussey.” 

And so it turned out ; Mr. Hosea Hussey being from 
home, but leaving Mrs. Hussey entirely competent to attend 
to all his affairs. Upon making known our desires for a 
supper and a bed, Mrs. Hussey, postponing further scolding 
for the present, ushered us into a little room, and seating 
us at a table spread with the relics of a recently concluded 
repast, turned round to us and said — “ Clam or Cod ? ” 

“ What’s that about Cods, ma’am ? ” said I, with much 
politeness. 

“ Clam or Cod ?” she repeated. 

“ A clam for supper ? a cold clam ; is that what you mean, 
Mrs. Hussey ? ” says I ; “ but that’s a rather cold and clammy 
reception in the winter time, ain’t it, Mrs. Hussey ? ” 


MOliY DICK. 


07 

But being in a great hurry to resume scolding the man 
in the purple shirt, who was waiting for it in the entry, 
and seeming to hear nothing but the word “ clam,” Mrs. 
Hussey hurried towards an open door leading to the 
kitchen, and bawling out “ clam for two,” disappeared. 

“ Queequeg,” said I, 44 do you think that we can make 
out a supper for us both on one clam ?” 

However, a warm savoury steam from the kitchen served 
to belie the apparently cheerless prospect before us. But 
when that smoking chowder came in, the mystery was de- 
lightfully explained. Oh, sweet friends ! hearken to me. 
It was made of small juicy clams, scarcely bigger than hazel 
nuts, mixed with pounded ship biscuit, and salted pork cut 
up into little flakes ; the whole enriched with butter, and 
plentifully seasoned with pepper and salt. Our appetites 
being sharpened by the frosty voyage, and in particular, 
Queequeg seeing his favourite fishing food before him, and 
the chowder being surpassingly excellent, we despatched 
it with great expedition : when leaning back a moment and 
bethinking me of Mrs. Hussey’s clam and cod announce- 
ment, I thought I would try a little experiment. Stepping 
to the kitchen door, I uttered the word 44 cod ” with great 
emphasis, and resumed my seat. In a few moments the sav- 
oury steam came forth again, but with a different flavour, 
and in good time a fine cod-chowder was placed before us. 

We resumed business ; and while plying our spoons in 
the bowl, thinks I to myself, I wonder now if this here has 
any effect on the head? What’s that stultifying saying 
about chowder-headed people? 44 But look, Queequeg, ain’t 
that a live eel in your bowl ? Where’s your harpoon ? ” 

Fishiest of all fishy places was the Try Pots, which well 
deserved its name ; for the pots there were always boiling 
chowders. Chowder for breakfast, and chowder for dinner, 
and chowder for supper, till you began to look for fish-bones 
coming through your clothes. The area before the house 
was paved with clam-shells. Mrs. Ilussey wore a polished 
necklace of codfish vertebra ; and Hosea Hussey had his ac- 
count books bound in superior old shark-skin. There was 
a fishy flavour to the milk, too, which I could not at all ac- 
count for, till one morning happening to take a stroll along 
the beach among some fishermen’s boats, I saw Ilosea’s 
brindled cow feeding on fish remnants, and marching along 
the sand with each foot in a cod’s decapitated head, looking 
very slip-shod, I assure ye. 


68 


MOBY DICK. 


Supper concluded, we received a lamp, and directions 
from Mrs. Hussey concerning the nearest way to bed ; but, 
as Queequeg was about to precede me up the stairs, 
the lady reached forth her arm, and demanded his harpoon ; 
she allowed no harpoon in her chambers. “ Why not ? ” 
said I ; “ every true whaleman sleeps with his harpoon — 
hut why not ! ” “ Because it’s dangerous,” says she. 

“ Ever since young Stiggs coming from that unfort’nt v’y’ge 
of his, when he was gone four years and a half, with only 
three barrels of ile, was found dead in my first floor back, 
with his harpoon in his side ; ever since then I allow no 
hoarders to take sich dangerous weepons in their rooms at 
night. So, Mr. Queequeg” (for she had learned his name), 
“ I will just take this here iron, and keep it for you till 
morning. But the chowder ; clam or cod to-morrow for 
breakfast, men ? ” 

“ Both,” says I ; “ and let’s have a couple of smoked her- 
ring by way of variety.” 


CHAPTER XYI. 

THE SHIP. 

Ix bed we concocted our plans for the morrow. But to 
my surprise and no small concern, Queequeg now gave me 
to understand that he had been diligently consulting Yojo 
— the name of his black little god — and Yojo had told him 
two or three times over, and strongly insisted upon it every 
way, that instead of our going together among the whaling- 
fleet in harbour, and in concert selecting our craft ; instead 
of this, I say, Yojo earnestly enjoined that the selection of 
the ship should rest wholly with me, inasmuch as Yojo 
purposed befriending us; and, in order to do so, had already, 
pitched upon a vessel, which, if left to myself, I, Ishmael, 
should infallibly light upon, for all the world as though it 
had turned out by chance ; and in that vessel I must imme- 
diately ship myself, for the present irrespective of Quee- 
queg. 

I have forgotten to mention that, in many things, Quee- 
queg placed great confidence in the excellence of Yojo’s 
judgment and surprising forecast of things ; and cherished 


MOBY DICK. 


69 


Yojo with considerable esteem, as a rather good sort of 
god, who perhaps meant well enough upon the whole, but 
in all cases did not succeed in his benevolent designs. 

Now, this plan of Queequeg’s, or rather Yojo’s, touching 
the selection of our craft ; I did not like that plan at all. 
I had not a little relied upon Queequeg’s sagacity to point 
out the whaler best fitted to carry us and our fortunes se- 
curely. But as all my remonstrances produced no effect 
upon Queequeg, I was obliged to acquiesce ; and accord- 
ingly prepared to set about this business with a determined 
rushing sort of energy and vigour, that should quickly settle 
that trifling little affair. Next morning early, leaving 
Queequeg shut up with Yojo in our little bedroom — for it 
seemed that it was some sort of Lent or Ramadan, or day of 
fasting, humiliation, and prayer with Queequeg and Yojo 
that day ; how it was I never could find out, for, though I 
applied myself to it several times, I never could master his 
liturgies and XXXIX Articles — leaving Queequeg, then, 
fasting on his tomahawk pipe, and Yojo warming himself 
at his sacrificial fire of shavings, I sallied out among the 
shipping. After much prolonged sauntering and many 
random inquiries, I learnt that there were three ships up 
for three-years’ voyages — The Devil-dam, the Tit-bit, and 
the Pequod. Devil-Dam, I do not know the origin of; 
Tit-bit is obvious ; Pequod , you will no doubt remember, 
was the name of a celebrated tribe of Massachusetts Indians, 
now extinct as the ancient Medes. I peered and pryed 
about the Devil-Dam ; from her, hopped over to the Tit-bit ; 
and, finally, going on board the Pequod, looked around her 
for a moment, and then decided that this was the very ship 
for us. 

You may have seen many a quaint craft in your day, for 
aught I know square-toed luggers ; mountainous Japan- 
ese junks ; butter-box galliots, and what not ; but take my 
word for it, you never saw such a rare old craft as this 
same rare old Pequod. She was a ship of the old school, 
rather small if anything ; with an old fashioned claw-footed 
look about her. Long seasoned and weather-stained in the 
typhoons and calms of all four oceans, her old hull’s com- 
plexion was darkened like a French grenadier’s, who has 
alike fought in Egypt and Siberia. Her venerable bows 
looked bearded. Her masts— cut somewhere on the coast 
of Japan, where her original ones were lost overboard in a 
gale— her masts stood stiffly up like the spines of the three 


70 


MOBY DICK. 


old kings of Cologne. Her ancient decks were worn and 
wrinkled, like the pilgrim- worshipped flag-stone in Canter- 
bury Cathedral where Beckett bled. But to all these her old 
antiquities, were added new and marvellous features, pertain- 
ing to the wild business that for more than half a century 
she had followed. Old Captain Peleg, many years her chief- 
mate, before he commanded another vessel of his own, and 
now a retired seaman, and one of the principal owners of 
the Pequod, — this old Peleg, during thq term of his chief- 
mateship, had built upon her original grotesqueness, and 
inlaid it, all over, with a quaintness both of material and 
device, unmatched by anything except it be Thorkill- Hake’s 
carved buckler or bedstead. She was apparelled like any 
barbaric Ethiopian emperor, his neck heavy with pendants 
of polished ivory. She was a thing of trophies. A canni- 
bal of a craft, tricking herself forth in the chased bones of 
her enemies. All round, her unpanelled, open bulwarks 
were garnished like one continuous jaw, with the long sharp 
teeth of the sperm whale, inserted there for pins, to fasten 
her old hempen thews and tendons to. Those thews ran 
not through base blocks of land wood, but deftly travelled 
over sheaves of sea-ivory. Scorning a turnstile wheel at 
her reverend helm, she sported there a tiller; and that til- 
ler was in one mass, curiously carved from the long narrow 
lower jaw of her hereditary foe. The helmsman who 
steered by that tiller in a tempest, felt like the Tartar, 
when he holds back his fiery steed by clutching its jaw. 
A noble craft, but somehow a most melancholy! All 
noble things are touched with that. 

Now when I looked about the quarter-deck, for some one 
having authority, in order to propose myself as a candidate 
for the voyage, at first I saw nobody ; but I could not well 
overlook a strange sort of tent, or rather wigwam, pitched 
a little behind the main-mast. It seemed only a temporary 
erection used in port. It was of a conical shape, some ten 
feet high ; consisting of the long, huge slabs of limber black 
bone taken from the middle and highest part of the jaws of 
the right-whale. Planted with their broad ends on the 
deck, a circle of these slabs laced together, mutually sloped 
towards each other, and at the apex united in a tufted point, 
where the loose hairy fibres waved to and fro like the top- 
knot on some old potto wottamie Sachem’s head. A trian- 
gular opening faced towards the bows of the ship so that the 
insider commanded a complete view forward. 


MOBY DICK. 


71 


And half concealed in this queer tenement, I at length 
found one who by his aspect seemed to have authority ; and 
who, it being noon, and the ship’s work suspended, was 
now enjoying respite from the burden of command. lie 
was seated on an old-fashioned oaken chair, wriggling all 
over with curious carving ; and the bottom of which was 
formed of a stout interlacing of the same elastic stuff of 
which the wigwam was constructed. 

There was nothing so very particular, perhaps, about the 
appearance of the elderly man I saw ; he was brown and 
brawny, like most old seamen, and heavily rolled up in blue 
pilot-cloth, cut in the Quaker style ; only there was a fine 
and almost microscopic net- work of the minutest wrinkles 
interlacing round his eyes, which must have arisen from his 
continual sailings in many hard gales, and always looking 
to windward; — for this causes the muscles about the eyes 
to become pursed together. Such eye-wrinkles are very 
effectual in a scowl. 

“ Is this the Captain of the Pequod ? ” said I, advancing 
to the door of the tent. 

“ Supposing it be the Captain of the Pequod, what dost 
thou want of him ? ” he demanded. 

“ I was thinking of shipping.” 

“Thou wast, wast thou? I see thou art no Nantucketer 
— ever been in a stove boat ? ” 

“ No, sir, I never have.” 

“ Dost know nothing at all about whaling, I dare say — 
eh?” 

“ Nothing, sir ; but I have no doubt I shall soon learn. 
I’ve been several voyages in the merchant service, and I 
think that ” 

“ Marchant service be damned. Talk not that lingo to 
me. Dost see that leg?— I’ll take that leg away from thy 
stern, if ever thou talkest of the marchant service to me 
again. Marchant service indeed ! I suppose now ye feel 
considerable proud of having served in those marchant 
ships. But flukes ! man, what makes thee want to go a 
whaling, eh ? — it looks a little suspicious, don’t it, eh ? — Hast 
not been a pirate, hast thou ?— Didst not rob thy last Cap- 
tain, didst thou ?— Dost not think of murdering the officers 
when thou gettest to sea ? ” 

I protested my innocence of these things. I saw that 
under the mask of these half humorous inuendoes, this old 
seaman, as an insulated Quakerish Nantucketer, was full of 


MOBY DICK. 


his insular prejudices, and rather distrustful of all aliens, 
unless they hailed from Cape Cod or the Vineyard. 

“ But what takes thee a- whaling ? I want to know that 
before I think of shipping ye.” 

“ Well, sir, I want to see what whaling is. I want to see 
the world.” 

“Want to see what whaling is, eh? Have ye clapped 
eye on Captain Ah ah ? ” 

“ Who is Captain Ahab, sir ? ” 

“ Aye, aye, I thought so. Captain Ahab is the Captain of 
this ship.” 

“ I am mistaken then. I thought I was speaking to the 
Captain himself.” 

“ Thou art speaking to Captain Peleg — that’s who ye are 
speaking to, young man. It belongs to me and Captain 
Bildad to see the Pequod fitted out for the voyage, and sup- 
plied with all her needs, including crew. We are part 
owners and agents. But as I was going to say, if thou 
wantest to know what whaling is, as thou tellest ye do, I 
can put ye in a way of finding it out before ye bind your- 
self to it, past hacking out. Clap eye on Captain Ahab, 
young man, and thou wilt find that he has only one leg.” 

“What do you mean, sir? Was the other one lost by a 
whale ? ” 

“Lost by a whale! Young man, come nearer to me: it 
was devoured, chewed up, crunched by the monstrousest 
parmacetty that ever chipped a boat ! — ah, ah ! ” 

I was a little alarmed by his energy, perhaps also a little 
touched at the hearty grief in his concluding exclamation, 
but said as calmly as I could, “ What you say is no doubt 
true enough, sir ; but how could I know there was any 
peculiar ferocity in that particular whale, though indeed I 
might have inferred as much from the simple fact of the 
accident.” 

“ Look ye now, young man, thy lungs are a sort of soft, 
d’ye see ; thou dost not talk shark a bit. Sure , ye’ve been 
to sea before now ; sure of that ? ” 

“ Sir,” said I, « I thought I told you that I had been four 
voyages in the merchant ” 

“ Hard down out of that ! Mind what I said about the 
marchant service— don’t aggravate me — I won’t have it. 
But let us understand each other. I have given thee a hint 
about what whaling is ; do ye yet feel inclined for it ? ” 

“ I do, sir.” 


MOB Y DICK. 


73 


“ Very good. Now, art thou the man to pitch a harpoon 
down a live whale’s throat, and then jump after it ? An- 
swer, quick ! ” 

“ I am, sir, if it should be positively indispensable to do 
so; not to be got rid of, that is; which I don’t take to he 
the fact.” 

“ Good again. Now then, thou not only wan test to go a- 
whaling, to find out by experience what whaling is, but ye 
also want to go in order to see the world ? W as not that 
what ye said? I thought so. Well then, just step forward 
there, and take a peep over the weather-bow, and then back 
to me and tell me what ye see there.” 

For a moment I stood a little puzzled by this curious re- 
quest, not knowing exactly how to take it, whether humor- 
ously or in earnest. But concentrating all his crow’s feet 
into one scowl, Captain Peleg started me on the errand. 

Going forward and glancing over the weather how, I per- 
ceived that the ship swinging to her anchor with the flood- 
tide, was now obliquely pointing towards the open ocean. 
The prospect was unlimited, but exceedingly monotonous 
and forbidding ; not the slightest variety that I could see. 

“Well, what’s the report?” said Peleg when I came 
hack ; “ what did ye see ? ” 

“ Not much,” I replied — “ nothing hut water ; considera- 
ble horizon though, and there’s a squall coming up, I 
think.” 

“Well, what dost thou think then of seeing the world? 
Do ye wish to go round Cape Horn to see any more of it, 
eh ? Can’t ye see the world where you stand ? ” 

I was a little staggered, but go a-whaling I must, and I 
would; and the Pequod was as good a ship as any — I 
thought the best — and all this I now repeated to Peleg. 
Seeing me so determined, he expressed his willingness to 
ship me. 

“ And thou mayest as well sign the papers right off,” he 
added — “ come along with ye.” And so saying, he led the 
way below deck into the cabin. 

Seated on the transom was what seemed to me a most 
uncommon and surprising figure. It turned out to be Cap- 
tain Bildad, who along with Captain Peleg was one of the 
largest owners of the vessel ; the other shares, as is some- 
times the case in these ports, being held by a crowd of old 
annuitants ; widows, fatherless children, and chancery 
wards ; each owning about the value of a timber head, or a 


74 


MO BY DICK. 


foot of plank, or a nail or two in the ship. People in Nan- 
tucket invest their money in whaling vessels, the same way 
that you do yours in approved state stocks bringing in 
good interest. 

Now, Bildad, like Peleg, and indeed many other Nan- 
tucketers, was a Quaker, the island having been originally 
settled by that sect ; and to this day its inhabitants in gen- 
eral retain in an uncommon measure the peculiarities of the 
Quaker, only variously and anomalously modified by things 
altogether alien and heterogeneous. For some of these same 
Quakers are the most sanguinary of all sailors and whale- 
hunters. They are fighting Quakers ; they are Quakers 
with a vengeance. 

So that there are instances among them of men, who, 
named with Scripture names — a singularly common fashion 
on the island — and in childhood naturally imbibing the 
stately dramatic thee and thou of the Quaker idiom ; still, 
from the audacious, daring, and boundless adventure of 
their subsequent lives, strangely blend with these unout- 
grown peculiarities, a thousand bold dashes of character, 
not unworthy a Scandinavian sea-king, or a poetical Pagan 
Roman. And when these things unite in a man of greatly 
superior natural force, with a globular brain and a ponder- 
ous heart; who has also by the stillness and seclusion of 
many long night-watches in the remotest waters, and 
beneath constellations never seen here at the north, been 
led to think untraditionally and independently ; receiving 
all nature’s sweet or savage impressions fresh from her own 
virgin voluntary and confiding breast, and thereby chiefly, 
but with some help from accidental advantages, to learn a 
bold and nervous lofty language — that man makes one in a 
whole nation’s census — a mighty pageant creature, formed 
for noble tragedies. Nor will it at all detract from him, 
dramatically regarded, if either by birth or other circum- 
stances, he have what seems a half wilful over-ruling mor- 
bidness at the bottom of his nature. For all men tragically 
great are made so through a certain morbidness. Be sure 
of this, O young ambition, all mortal greatness is but 
disease. But, as yet we have not to do with such an one, 
but with quite another ; and still a man, who, if indeed 
peculiar, it only results again from another phase of the 
Quaker, modified by individual circumstances. 

Like Captain Peleg, Captain Bildad was a well-to-do, re- 
tired whaleman. But unlike Captain Peleg — who cared 


J WBT DICK. 


75 

not a rush for what are called serious things, and indeed 
deemed those self-same serious things the veriest of all 
trifles — Captain Bildad had not only been originally edu- 
cated according to the strictest sect of Nantucket Quaker- 
ism, but all his subsequent ocean life, and the sight of 
many unclad, lovely island creatures, round the Horn — all 
that had not moved this native born Quaker one single jot, 
had not so much as altered one angle of his vest. Still, for 
all this immutableness, was there some lack of common 
consistency about worthy Captain Peleg. Though refus- 
ing, from conscientious scruples, to bear arms against land 
invaders, yet himself had inimitably invaded the Atlantic 
and Pacific; and though a sworn foe to human bloodshed, 
yet had he in his straight-bodied coat, spilled tuns upon 
tuns of leviathan gore. How now in the contemplative 
evening of his days, the pious Bildad reconciled these things 
in the reminiscence, I do not know ; but it did not seem to 
concern him much, and very probably he had long since 
come to the sage and sensible conclusion that a man’s 
religion is one thing, and this practical world quite another. 
This world pays dividends. Rising from a little cabin-boy 
in short clothes of the drabbest drab, to a harpooner in a 
broad shad-bellied waistcoat ; from that becoming boat- 
header, chief-mate, and captain, and finally a ship owner ; 
Bildad, as I hinted before, had concluded his adventurous 
career by wholly retiring from active life at the goodly age 
of sixty, and dedicating his remaining days to the quiet 
receiving of his well-earned income. 

Now Bildad, I am sorry to say, had the reputation of 
being an incorrigible old hunks, and in his sea-going days, 
a bitter, hard task-master. They told me in Nantucket, 
though it certainly seems a curious story, that when he 
sailed the old Categut whaleman, his crew, upon arriving 
home, were mostly all carried ashore to the hospital, sore 
exhausted and worn out. For a pious man, especially for 
a Quaker, he was certainly rather hard-hearted, to say the 
least. He never used to swear, though, at his men, they 
said ; but somehow he got an inordinate quantity of cruel, 
unmitigated hard work out of them. When Bildad was a 
chief-mate, to have his drab-coloured eye intently looking at 
you, made you feel completely nervous, till you could clutch 
something — a hammer or a marling-spike, and go to work 
like mad, at something or other, never mind what. In- 
dolence and idleness perished from before him. His own 


76 


MOBY DICK. 


person was the exact embodiment of his utilitarian charac- 
ter. On his long, gaunt body, he carried no spare flesh, no 
superfluous heard, his chin having a soft, economical nap to 
it, like the worn nap of his broad-brimmed hat. 

Such, then, was the person that I saw seated on the 
transom when I followed Captain Peleg down into the cabin. 
The space between the decks was small ; and there, bolt- 
upright, sat old Bildad, who always sat so, and never leaned, 
and this to save his coat tails. His broad-brim was 
placed beside him ; his legs were stiffly crossed ; his drab 
vesture was buttoned up to his chin ; and spectacles on nose, 
he seemed absorbed in reading from a ponderous volume. 

“ Bildad,” cried Captain Peleg, “ at it again, Bildad, eh ? 
Ye have been studying those Scriptures, now, for the last 
thirty years, to my certain knowledge. How far ye got, 
Bildad ? ” 

As if long habituated to such profane talk from his old 
shipmate, Bildad, without noticing his present irreverence, 
quietly looked up, and seeing me, glanced again inquiringly 
towards Peleg. 

“ He says he’s our man, Bildad,” said Peleg, “he wants 
to ship.” 

“ Dost thee ? ” said Bildad, in a hollow tone, and turning 
round to me. 

“ I dost” said I unconsciously, he was so intense a Quaker. 

“ What do ye think of him, Bildad ? ” said Peleg. 

“He’ll do,” said Bildad, eyeing me, and then went on 
spelling away at his book in a mumbling tone quite audible. 

I thought him the queerest old Quaker I ever saw, espe- 
cially as Peleg, his friend and old shipmate, seemed such a 
blusterer. But I said nothing, only looking round me sharply. 
Peleg now threw open a chest, and drawing forth the ship’s 
articles, placed pen and ink before him, and seated himself 
at a little table. I began to think it was high time to settle 
with myself at what terms I would be willing to engage for 
the voyage. I was already aware that in the whaling 
business they paid no wages ; hut all hands, including the 
captain, received certain shares of the profits called lays, 
and that these lays were proportioned to the degree of im- 
portance pertaining to the respective duties of the ship’s 
company. I was also aware that being a green hand at 
whaling, my own lay would not be very large ; but consider- 
ing that I was used to the sea, could steer a ship, splice a 
rope, and all that, I made no doubt that from all I had 


MOBY DICK. 


77 


heard I should be offered at least the 275th lay — that is, the 
275th part of the clear nett proceeds of the voyage, what- 
ever that might eventually amount to. And though the 
275th lay was what they call a rather long lay , yet it was 
better than nothing ; and if we had a lucky voyage, might 
pretty nearly pay for the clothing I would wear out on it, 
not to speak of my three years’ beef and board, for which I 
would not have to pay one stiver. 

It might be thought that this was a poor way to accumu- 
late a princely fortune — and so it was, a very poor way 
indeed. But I am one of those that never take on about 
princely fortunes, and am quite content if the world is 
ready to board and lodge me, while I am putting up at this 
grim sign of the Thunder Cloud. Upon the whole, I 
thought that the 275th lay would be about the fair thing, 
but would not have been surprised had I been offered the 
200th, considering I was of a broad-shouldered make. 

But one thing, nevertheless, that made me a little dis- 
trustful about receiving a generous share of the profits was 
this : Ashore, I had heard something of both Captain Peleg 
and his unaccountable old crony Bildad ; how that they 
being the principal proprietors of the Pequod, therefore the 
other and more inconsiderable and scattered owners, left 
nearly the whole management of the ship’s affairs to these 
two. And I did not know but what the stingy old Bildad 
might have a mighty deal to say about shipping hands, es- 
pecially as I now found him on board the Pequod, quite at 
home there in the cabin, and reading his Bible as if at his 
own fireside. Now while Peleg was vainly trying to mend 
a pen with his jack-knife, old Bildad, to my no small 
surprise, considering that he was such an interested party 
in these proceedings ; Bildad never heeded us, but went on 
mumbling to himself out of his book. “ Lay not up for 

yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth ” 

“Well, Captain Bildad,” interrupted Peleg, “what d’ye 
say, what lay shall we give this young man ? ” 

“Thou knowest best,” was the sepulchral reply, “the 
seven hundred and seventy-seventh wouldn’t be too much, 

would it ? — ‘ where moth and rust do corrupt, but lay ’ ” 

Lay , indeed, thought I, and such a lay ! the seven hundred 
and seventy-seventh ! Well, old Bildad, you are determined 
that I, for one, shall not lay up many lays here below, 
where moth and rust do corrupt. It was an exceedingly 
long lay that, indeed ; and though from the magnitude of 


MOBY DICK. 


78 

the figure it might at first deceive a landsman, yet the 
slightest consideration will show that though seven hundred 
and seventy-seven is a pretty large number, yet, when you 
come to make a teenth of it, you will then see, I say, that 
the seven hundred and seventy-seventh part of a farthing 
is a good deal less than seven hundred and seventy-seven 
gold doubloons ; and so I thought at the time. 

“ Why, blast your eyes, Bildad,” cried Peleg, “thou dost 
not want to swindle this young man ! he must have more 
than that.” 

“ Seven hundred and seventy-seventh,” again said Bildad, 
without lifting his eyes ; and then went on mumbling — 
“ for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” 

“ I am going to put him down for the three hundreth,” 
said Peleg, “ do ye hear that, Bildad ! The three hundreth 
lay, I say.” 

Bildad laid down his book, and turning solemnly towards 
him said, “ Captain Peleg, thou hast a generous heart ; but 
thou must consider the duty thou owest to the other owners 
of this ship — widows and orphans, many of them — and that 
if we too abundantly reward the labours of this young man, 
we may be taking the bread from those widows and those 
orphans. The seven hundred and seventy-seventh lay, 
Captain Peleg.” 

“ Thou, Bildad ! ” roared Peleg, starting up and clatter- 
ing about the cabin. “ Blast ye, Captain Bildad, if I had 
followed thy advice in these matters, I would afore now 
had a conscience to lug about that would be heavy enough 
to founder the largest ship that ever sailed round Cape 
Horn.” 

“ Captain Peleg,” said Bildad steadily, “ thy conscience 
may be drawing ten inches of water, or ten fathoms, I can’t 
tell ; but as thou art still an impenitent man, Captain Peleg, 
I greatly fear lest thy conscience be but a leaky one ; and 
will in the end sink thee foundering down to the fiery pit, 
Captain Peleg.” 

“ Fiery pit ! fiery pit ! ye insult me, man ; past all natural 
bearing, ye insult me. It’s an all-fired outrage to tell any 
human creature that he’s bound to hell. Flukes and flames ! 
Bildad, say that again to me, and start my soul-bolts, but 
I’ll — I’ll — yes, I’ll swallow a live goat with all his hair and 
horns on. Out of the cabin, ye canting, drab-coloured son of 
a wooden gun — a straight wake with ye ! ” 

As he thundered out this he made a rush at Bildad, but 


MOBY DICK. 


79 


with a marvellous oblique, sliding celerity, Bildad for that 
time eluded him. 

Alarmed at this terrible outburst between the two 
principal and responsible owners of the ship, and feeling 
half a mind to give up all idea of sailing in a vessel so 
questionably owned and temporarily commanded, I stepped 
aside from the door to give egress to Bildad, who I made 
no doubt, was all eagerness to vanish from before the 
awakened wrath of Peleg. But to my astonishment, he 
sat down again on the transom very quietly, and seemed to 
have not the slightest intention of withdrawing. He seemed 
quite used to impenitent Peleg and his ways. As for Peleg, 
after letting off his rage as he had, there seemed no more 
left in him, and he, too, sat down like a lamb, though he 
twitched a little as if still nervously agitated. “ Whew ! ” 
he whistled at last — “ the squall’s gone off to leeward, I 
think. Bildad, thou used to be good at sharpening a lance, 
mend that pen, will ye. My jack-knife here needs the 
grindstone. That’s he ; thank ye, Bildad. Now then, my 
young man, Ishmael’s thy name, didn’t ye say ? Well then, 
down ye go here, Ishmael, for the three hundredth lay.” 

“ Captain Peleg,” said I, “ I have a friend with me who 
wants to ship too — shall I bring him down to-morrow ? ” 

“ To be sure,” said Peleg. “ Fetch him along, and we’ll 
look at him.” 

“ What lay does he want ? ” groaned Bildad, glancing up 
from the book in which he had again been burying him- 
self. 

“ Oh ! never thee mind about that, Bildad,” said Peleg. 
“ Has he ever whaled it any ? ” turning to me. 

“ Killed more whales than I can count, Captain Peleg.” 

“ Well, bring him along then.” 

And, after signing the papers, off I went ; nothing doubt- 
ing but that I had done a good morning’s work, and that 
the Pequod was the identical ship that Yojo had provided 
to carry Queequeg and me round the Cape. 

But I had not proceeded far, when I began to bethink me 
that the captain with whom I was to sail yet remained un- 
seen by me ; though, indeed, in many cases, a whale-ship 
will be completely fitted out, and receive all her crew on 
board, ere the captain makes himself visible by arriving to 
take command ; for sometimes these voyages are so pro- 
longed, and the shore intervals at home so exceedingly 
brief, that if the captain have a family, or any absorbing 


80 


MOBY DICK. 


concernment of that sort, he does not trouble himself much 
about his ship in port, but leaves her to the owners till all 
is ready for sea. However, it is always as well to have a 
look at him before irrevocably committing yourself into his 
hands. Turning back I accosted Captain Peleg, inquiring 
where Captain Ahab was to be found. 

“ And what dost thou want of Captain Ahab ? It’s a 11 
right enough ; thou art shipped.” 

“Yes, but I should like to see him.” 

“But I don’t think thou wilt be able to at present. I 
don’t know exactly what’s the matter with him; but he 
keeps close inside the house; a sort of sick, and yet he 
don’t look so. In fact, he ain’t sick ; but no, he isn’t well 
either. Anyhow, young man, he won’t always see me, so 
I don’t suppose he* will thee. He’s a queer man, Captain 
Ahab — so some think — but a good one. Oh, thou’lt like 
him well enough ; no fear, no fear. He’s a grand, ungodly, 
god-like man, Captain Ahab ; doesn’t speak much ; but, 
when he does speak, then you may well listen. Mark ye, 
be forewarned; Ahab’s above the common; Ahab’s been in 
colleges, as well as ’mong the cannibals ; been used to deeper 
wonders than the waves ; fixed his fiery lance in mightier, 
stranger foes than whales. His lance! aye, the keenest 
and the surest that out of all our isle! Oh! he ain’t 
Captain Bildad; no, and he ain’t Captain Peleg; he’s Ahab , 
boy , and Ahab of old, thou knowest, was a crowned king ! ” 

“ And a very vile one. When that wicked king was slain, 
the dogs, did they not lick his blood ? ” 

“ Come hither to me — hither, hither,” said Peleg, with a 
significance in his eye that almost startled me. “Look ye, 
lad ; never say that on board the Pequod. Never say it 
anywhere. Captain Ahab did not name himself. ’Twas a 
foolish, ignorant whim of his crazy, widowed mother, who 
died when he was only a twelvemonth old. And yet the 
old squaw Tistig, at Gay Head, said that the name would 
somehow prove prophetic. And, perhaps, other fools like 
her may tell thee the same. I wish to warn thee. It’s 
a lie. I know Captain Ahab well ; I’ve sailed with him as 
mate years ago ; I know what he is — a good man — not a 
pious, good man, like Bildad, but a swearing good man — 
something like me — only there’s a good deal more of him. 
Aye, aye, I know that he was never very jolly ; and I know 
that on the passage home, he was a little out of his mind 
for a spell; but it was the sharp shooting pains in his 


MOBY DICK. 


81 


bleeding stump that brought that about, as any one might 
see. I know, too, that ever since he lost his leg last voyage 
by that accursed whale, he’s been a kind of moody — desperate 
moody, and savage sometimes ; but that will all pass off. 
And once for all, let me tell thee and assure thee, young 
man, it’s better to sail with a moody good captain than a 
laughing bad one. So good-bye to thee — and wrong not 
Captain Ahab, because he happens to have a wicked name. 
Besides, my boy, he has a wife — not three voyages wedded — 
a sweet, resigned girl. Think of that ; by that sweet girl 
that old man has a child : hold ye then there can be any 
utter, hopeless harm in Ahab ? No, no, my lad ; stricken, 
blasted, if he be, Ahab has his humanities ! ” 

As I walked away, I was full of thoughtfulness ; what 
had been incidentally revealed to me of Captain Ahab, 
filled me with a certain wild vagueness of painfulness 
concerning him. And somehow, at the time, I felt a 
sympathy and a sorrow for him, but for I don’t know what, 
unless it was the cruel loss of his leg. And yet I also felt 
a strange awe of him ; but that sort of awe, which I cannot 
at all describe, was not exactly awe ; I do not know what it 
was. But I felt it ; and it did not disincline me towards 
him ; though I felt impatience at what seemed like mystery 
in him, so imperfectly as he was known to me then. 
However, my thoughts were at length carried in other direc- 
tions, so that for the present dark Ahab slipped my mind. 


CHAPTER XVII. 

* THE RAMADAN. 

As Queequeg’s Ramadan, or Fasting and Humiliation, 
was to continue all day, I did not choose to disturb him till 
towards nightfall ; for I cherish the greatest respect to- 
wards everybody’s religious obligations, never mind how 
comical, and could not find it in my heart to undervalue 
even a congregation of ants worshipping a toad- stool ; or 
those other creatures in certain parts of our earth, who with 
a degree of footmanism quite unprecedented in other 
planets, bow down before the torso of a deceased landed 
proprietor merely on account of the inordinate possessions 
yet owned and rented in his name. 


82 


MOBY DICK. 


Isay, we good Presbyterian Christians should be char- 
itable in these things, and not fancy ourselves so vastly 
superior to other mortals, Pagans and what not, because of 
their half-crazy conceits on these subjects. There was 
Queequeg, now, certainly entertaining the most absurd 
notions about Yojo and his Ramadan; — but what of that? 
Queequeg thought he knew what he was about, I suppose ; 
he seemed to be content ; and there let him rest. All our 
arguing with him would not avail ; let him be, I say : and 
Heaven have mercy on us all — Presbyterians and Pagan s 
alike — for we are all somehow dreadfully cracked about the 
head, and sadly need mending. 

Towards evening, when I felt assured that all his per- 
formances and rituals must be over, I went up to his room 
and knocked at the door ; but no answer. I tried to open 
it, but it was fastened inside. “Queequeg,” said I softly 
through the key-hole : — all silent. “ I say, Queequeg ! why 
don’t you speak ? It’s I — Ishmael.” But all remained still 
as before. I began to grow alarmed. I had allowed him 
such abundant time ; I thought he might have had an apo- 
plectic fit. I looked through the keyhole ; but the door open- 
ing into an odd corner of the room, the keyhole prospect 
was but a crooked and sinister one. I could only see part of 
the foot-board of the bed and a line of the wall, but nothing 
more. I was surprised to behold resting against the wall 
the wooden shaft of Queequeg’ s harpoon, which the land- 
lady the evening previous had taken from him, before our 
mounting to the chamber. That’s strange, thought I ; but 
at any rate, since the harpoon stands yonder, and he seldom 
or never goes abroad without it, therefore he must be inside 
here, and no possible mistake. 

“ Queequeg ! — Queequeg ! ” — all still. ••Something must 
have happened. Apoplexy ! I tried to burst open the door ; 
but it stubbornly resisted. Running downstairs, I quickly 
stated my suspicions to the first person I met — the chamber- 
maid. “ La ! la ! ” she cried, “ I thought something must 
be the matter. I went to make the bed after breakfast, and 
the door was locked ; and not a mouse to be heard ; and it’s 
been just so silent ever since. But I thought, may be, you 
had both gone off and locked your baggage in for safe-keep- 
ing. La ! la, ma’am ! — Mistress ! murder ! Mrs. Hussey ! apo- 
plexy !” — and with these cries, she ran towards the kitchen, 
I following. 

Mrs. Hussey soon appeared, with a mustard-pot in one 


MOB Y D ICK. 


83 

hand and a vinegar-cruet in the other, having just broken 
away from the occupation of attending to the castors, and 
scolding her little black boy meantime. 

“ Wood-house!” cried I, “which way to it? Run for 
God’s sake, and fetch something to pry open the door — the 
axe ! — the axe ! — lie’s had a stroke ; depend upon it ! ’’—and 
so saying I was unmethodically rushing upstairs again 
empty-handed, when Mrs. Hussey interposed the mustard- 
pot and vinegar- cruet, and the entire castor of her coun- 
tenance. 

“ What’s the matter with you, young man ? ” 

“Get the axe! For God’s sake, run for the doctor, some 
one, while I pry it open ! ” 

“ Look here,” said the landlady, quickly putting down the 
vinegar-cruet, so as to have one hand free ; “ look here : are 
you talking about prying open any of my doors ? ” — and with 
that she seized my arm. “ What’s the matter with you ? 
What’s the matter with you, shipmate ? ” 

In as calm, but rapid a manner as possible, I gave her to 
understand the whole case. Unconsciously clapping the 
vinegar-cruet to one side of her nose, she ruminated for an 
instant ; then exclaimed — « No ! I haven’t seen it since I put 
it there.” Running to a little closet under the landing of 
the stairs, she glanced in, and returning, told me that Quee- 
queg’s harpoon was missing. “He’s killed himself,” she 
cried. “ It’s unfort’nate Stiggs done over again — there goes 
another comiterpane — God pity his poor mother ! — it will be 
the rum of my house. Has the poor lad a sister ? Where’s 
that girl ? — there, Betty, go to Snarles the Painter, and tell 
him to paint me a sign, with — ‘ no suicides permitted here, 
and no smoking in the parlour ; ’ — might as well kill both 
birds at once. Kill ? The Lord be merciful to his ghost ! 
What’s that noise there ? You, young man, avast there ! ” 
And running up after me, she caught me as I was again 
trying to force open the door. 

“ I don’t allow it ; I won’t have my premises spoiled. Go . 
for the locksmith, there’s one about a mile from here. But 
avast ! ” putting her hand in her side-pocket, “ here’s a key 
that’ll fit, I guess ; let’s see.” And with that, she turned it 
in the lock;" but, alas! Queequeg’s supplemental bolt re- 
mained unwithdrawn within. 

“ Have to burst it open,” said I, and was running down 
the entry a little, for a good start, when the landlady caught 
at me, again vowing I should not break down her premises ; 


84 


MOBY DICK. 


but I tore from her, and with a sudden bodily rush dashed 
myself full against the mark. 

With a prodigious noise the door flew open, and the knob 
slamming against the wall, sent the plaster to the ceiling ; 
and there, good heavens! there sat Queequeg, altogether 
cool and self-collected ; right in the middle of the room ; 
squatting on his hams, and holding Yojo on the top of his 
head. He looked neither one way nor the other way, but sat 
like a carved image with scarce a sign of active life. 

“ Queequeg,” said I, going up to him, “ Queequeg, what’s 
the matter with you ? ” 

“ He hain’t been a sittin’ so all day, has he ? ” said the 
landlady. 

But all we said, not a word could we drag out of him ; I 
almost felt like pushing him over, so as to change his posi- 
tion, for it was almost intolerable, it seemed so painfully 
and unnaturally constrained ; especially, as in all probabil- 
ity he had been sitting so for upwards of eight or ten hours, 
going too without his regular meals. 

“Mrs. Hussey,” said I, “ he’s alive at all events ; so leave 
us, if you please, and I will see to this strange affair myself.” 

Closing the door upon the landlady, I endeavoured to pre- 
vail upon Queequeg to take a chair ; but in vain. There he 
sat ; and all he could do — for all my polite arts and blandish- 
ments — he would not move a peg, nor say a single word, 
nor even look at me, nor notice my presence in the slight- 
est way. 

I wonder, thought I, if this can possibly be a part of his 
Ramadan ; do they fast on their hams that way in his native 
island. It must be so ; yes, it’s part of his creed, I suppose ; 
well, then, let him rest; he’ll get up sooner or later, no 
doubt. It can’t last forever, thank God, and his Ramadan 
only comes once a year ; and I don’t believe it’s very punc- 
tual then. 

I went down to supper. After sitting a longtime listen- 
ing to the long stories of some sailors who had just come 
from a plum-pudding voyage, as they called it (that is, a 
short whaling- voyage in a schooner or brig, confined to the 
north of the line, in the Atlantic Ocean only) ; after listening 
to these plum-puddingers till nearly eleven o’clock, I went 
upstairs to go to bed, feeling quite sure by this time Quee- 
queg must certainly have brought his Ramadan to a termi- 
nation. But no ; there he was just where I had left him ; 
he had not stirred an inch. I began to grow vexed with 


MOB Y DICK. 


85 


him ; it seemed so downright senseless and insano to be 
sitting there all day and half the night on his hams in a 
cold room, holding a piece of wood on his head. 

“ For heaven’s sake, Queequeg, get up and shake your- 
self; get up and have some supper. You’ll starve ; you’ll 
kill yourself, Queequeg.” But not a word did he reply. 

Despairing of him, therefore, I determined to go to bed 
and to sleep ; and no doubt, before a great while, he would 
follow me. But previous to turning in, I took my heavy 
bearskin jacket, and threw it over him, as it promised to be 
a very cold night ; and he had nothing but his ordinary 
round jacket on. For some time, do all I would, I could 
not get into the faintest doze. I had blown out the candle ; 
and the mere thought of Queequeg — not four feet off— sit- 
ting there in that uneasy position, stark alone in the cold 
and dark; this made me really wretched. Think of it; 
sleeping all night in the same room with a wide-awake 
pagan on his hams in this dreary, unaccountable Ramadan ! 

But somehow I dropped off at last, and knew nothing 
more till break of day ; when, looking over the bedside, 
there squatted Queequeg, as if he had been screwed down 
to the floor. But as soon as the first glimpse of sun entered 
the window, up he got, with stiff and grating joints, but 
with a cheerful look; limped towards me where I lay; 
pressed his forehead again against mine; and said his 
Ramadan was over. 

Now, as I before hinted, I have no objection to any per- 
son’s religion, be it what it may, so long as that person does 
not kill or insult any other person, because that other person 
don’t believe it also. But when a man’s religion becomes 
really frantic ; when it is a positive torment to him ; and, 
in fine, makes this earth of ours an uncomfortable inn to 
lodge in ; then I think it high time to take that individual 
aside and argue the point with him. 

And just so I now did with Queequeg. “ Queequeg,” 
said I, “ get into bed now, and lie and listen to me.” I then 
went on, beginning with the rise and progress of the primi- 
tive religions, and coming down to the various religions of 
the present time, during which time I laboured to show 
Queequeg that all these Lents, Ramadans, and prolonged 
ham-squattings in cold, cheerless rooms were* stark non- 
sense ; bad for the health ; useless for the soul ; opposed, in 
short, to the obvious laws of Hygiene and common sense. 
I told him, too, that he being in other things such an ex- 


MOBY LICK. 


80 

tremely sensible and sagacious savage, it pained me, very 
badly pained me, to see him now so deplorably foolish 
about this ridiculous Ramadan of his. Besides, argued I, 
fasting makes the body cave in ; hence the spirit caves in ; 
and all thoughts born of a fast must necessarily be half- 
starved. This is the reason why most dyspeptic religion- 
ists cherish such melancholy notions about their hereafters. 
In one word, Queequeg, said I, rather digressively ; hell is 
an idea first born on an undigested apple-dumpling ; and 
since then perpetuated through the hereditary dyspepsias 
nurtured by Iiamadans. 

I then asked Queequeg whether he himself was ever 
troubled with dyspepsia ; expressing the idea very plainly, 
so that he could take it in. He said no ; only upon one 
memorable occasion. It was after a great feast given by 
his father the king, on the gaining of a great battle wherein 
fifty of the enemy had been killed by about two o’clock in 
the afternoon, and all cooked and eaten, that very evening. 

“No more, Queequeg,” said I, shuddering; “ that will 
do ; ” for I knew the inferences without his further hinting 
them. I had seen a sailor who had visited that very island, 
and he told me that it was the custom, -when a great battle 
had been gained there, to barbecue all the slain in the yard 
or garden of the victor ; and then, one by one, they were 
placed in great wooden trenchers, and garnished round like 
a pilau, with breadfruit and cocoanuts; and with some 
parsley in their mouths, were sent round with the victor’s 
compliments to all his friends, just as though these presents 
were so many Christmas turkeys. 

After all, I do not think that my remarks about religion 
made much impression upon Queequeg. Because, in the 
first place, he somehow seemed dull of hearing on that im- 
portant subject, unless considered from his own point of 
view ; and, in the second place, he did not more than one. 
third understand me, couch my ideas simply as I would ;* 
and, finally, he no doubt thought he knew a good deal more 
about the true religion than I did. He looked at me with 
a sort of condescending concern and compassion, as though 
he thought it a great pity that such a sensible young man 
should be so hopelessly lost to evangelical pagan piety. 

At last we rose and dressed ; and Queequeg, taking a pro- 
digiously hearty breakfast of chowders of all sorts, so that 
the landlady should not make much profit by reason of his 
Ramadan, we sallied out to board the Pequod, sauntering 
along, and picking our teeth with halibut bones. 


MOBY DICK. 


87 


■ • 


CHAPTER XVIII. 

HIS MAR K. 

As we were walking down the end of the wharf towards 
the ship, Queequeg carrying his harpoon, Captain Peleg in 
his gruff voice loudly hailed us from his wigwam, saying 
he had not suspected my friend was a cannibal, and further- 
more announcing that he let no cannibals on board that 
craft, unless they previously produced their papers. 

“ What do you mean by that, Captain Peleg ? ” said I, 
now jumping on the bulwarks, and leaving my comrade 
standing on the wharf. 

“ I mean,” he replied, “ he must show his papers.” 

“ Yes,” said Captain Bildad in his hollow voice, sticking 
his head from behind Peleg’s, out of the wigwam. “lie 
must show that he’s converted. Son of darkness,” he added, 
turning to Queequeg, “ art thou at present in communion 
with any Christian church ? ” 

“ Why,” said I, “ he’s a member of the first Congrega- 
tional Church.” Here be it said, that many tattooed sav- 
ages sailing in Nantucket ships at last come to be converted 
into the churches. 

“ First Congregational Church,” cried Bildad, “ what ! 
that worships in Deacon Deuteronomy Coleman’s meeting- 
house ? ” and so saying, taking out his spectacles, he rubbed 
them with his great yellow bandana handkerchief, and put- 
ting them on very carefully, came out of the wigwam, and 
leaning stiffiy over the bulwarks, took a good long look at 
Queequeg. 

“ How long hath he been r a member? ” he then said, turn- 
ing to me ; “ not very long, I rather guess, young man.” 

“ No,” said Peleg, “ and he hasn’t been baptised right 
either, or it would have washed some of that devil’s blue off 
his face.” 

“ Do tell, now,” cried Bildad, “ is this Philistine a regular 
member of Deacon Deuteronomy’s meeting ? I never saw 
him going there, and I pass it every Lord’s day.” 

“ I don’t know anything about Deacon Deuteronomy or 


88 


MOB V DICK. 


his meeting,” said I, “ all I know is, that Queequeg here, is 
a born member of the First Congregational Church. He is 
a deacon himself, Queequeg is.” 

“ Young man,” said Bildad sternly, “ thou art skylarking 
with me — explain thyself, thou young Hittite. What church 
dost thee mean ? answer me.” 

Finding myself thus hard pushed, I replied. “ I mean, 
sir, the same ancient Catholic Church to which you and I, 
and Captain Peleg there, and Queequeg here, and all of us, 
and every mother’s son and soul of us belong ; the great and 
everlasting First Congregation of this whole worshipping 
world ; we all belong to that ; only some of us cherish some 
queer crotchets noways touching the grand belief ; in that 
we all join hands.” 

“ Splice, thou mean’st splice hands,” cried Peleg, drawing 
nearer. “Young man, you’d better ship for a missionary, 
instead of a fore-mast hand ; I never heard a better eermon. 
Deacon Deuteronomy — why Father Mapple himself couldn’t 
beat it, and he’s reckoned something. Come aboard, come 
aboard ; never mind about the papers. I say, tell Quohog 
there — what’s that you call him ? tell Quohog to step along. 
By the great anchor, what a harpoon he’s got there ! looks 
like good stuff that ; and he handles it about right. I say, 
Quohog, or whatever your name is, did you ever stand in 
the head of a whale-boat ? did you ever strike a fish ? ” 

Without saying a word, Queequeg, in his wild sort of way, 
jumped upon the bulwarks, from thence into the bows of 
one of the whale-boats hanging to the side ; and then brac- 
ing his left knee, and posing his harpoon, cried out in some 
such way as this : — 

“ Cap’ain, you see him small drop tar on water dere? You 
see him ? well, spose him one whale eye, well, den ! ” and 
takin sharp aim at it, he darted the iron right over old Bil- 
dad’s broad, brim, clean across the ship’s decks, and struck 
the glistening tar spot out of sight. 

“Now,” said Queequeg, quietly hauling in the line, 
“ spos-ee him whale-e eye ; why, dad whale dead.” 

“ Quick, Bildad,” said Peleg, his partner, who, aghast, 
at the close vicinity of the flying harpoon, had retreated 
towards the cabin gangway. “ Quick, I say, you Bildad, 
and get the ship’s papers. We must have Hedgehog there, 
I mean Quohog, in one of our boats. Look "ye, Quohog, 
we’ll give ye the ninetieth lay, and that’s more than ever 
was given a harpooner yet out of Nantucket.” 


MOBY DICK. 


89 


So down we went into the cabin, and to my great joy 
Queeqneg was soon enrolled among* the same ship’s com- 
pany to which I myself belonged. 

When all preliminaries were over and Peleg had got 
everything ready for signing, he turned to me and said, “ I 
guess, Quohog there don’t know how to write, does he ? I 
say, Quohog, blast ye ! dost thou sign thy name or make 
thy mark ? ” 

But at this question, Queequeg, who had twice or thrice 
before taken part in similar ceremonies, looked noways 
abashed ; but taking the offered pen, copied upon the paper, 
in the proper place, an exact counterpart of a queer round 
figure which was tattooed upon his arm ; so that through 
Captain Peleg’s obstinate mistake touching his appellative, 
it stood something like this : — 

Quohog. 
his X mark. 

Meanwhile Captain Bildad sat earnestly and steadfastly 
eyeing Queequeg, and at last rising solemnly and fumbling 
in the huge pockets of his broad-skirted drab coat, took out 
a bundle of tracts, and selecting one entitled “ The Latter 
Day Coming; or No Time to Lose,” placed it in Queequeg’s 
hands, and then grasping them and the book with both his, 
looked earnestly into his eyes, and said, “ Son of darkness, 
I must do my duty by thee ; I am part owner of this ship, 
and feel concerned for the souls of all its crew ; if thou still 
clingest to thy Pagan ways, which I sadly fear, I beseech 
thee, remain not for aye a Belial bondsman. Spurn the idol 
Bel, and the hideous dragon ; turn from the wrath to come ; 
mind thine eye, I say ; oh ! goodness gracious ! steer clear 
of the fiery pit ! ” 

Something of the salt sea yet lingered in old Bildad’s 
language, heterogeneously mixed with Scriptural and do- 
mestic phrases. 

“ Avast there, avast there, Bildad, avast now spoiling 
our harpooner,” cried Peleg. “ Pious harpooners never 
make good voyagers — it takes the shark out of ’em ; no 
harpooner is worth a straw who ain’t pretty sharkish. 
There was young Nat Swaine, once the bravest boat- 
header out of all Nantucket and the Vineyard ; he joined 
the meeting, and never came to good. He got so fright- 
ened about his plaguy soul, that he shrinked and sheered 


90 


MOB Y DICK. 


away from whales, for fear of after-claps, in case lie got 
stove and went to Davy Jones.” 

“ Peleg ! Peleg ! ” said Bildad, lifting his eyes and hands, 
“ thou thyself, as I myself, hast seen many a perilous time ; 
thou knowest, Peleg, what it is to have the fear of death ; 
how, then, can’st thou prate in this ungodly guise. Thou 
beliest thine own heart, Peleg. Tell me, when this same 
Pequod here had her three masts overboard in that ty- 
phoon on Japan, that same voyage when thou went mate 
with Captain Ahab, did’st thou not think of Death and the 
Judgment then ? ” 

“ Hear him, hear him now,” cried Peleg, marching across 
the cabin, and thrusting his hands far down into his pock- 
ets, — “ hear him, all of ye. Think of that ! When every 
moment we thought the ship would sink ! Death and the 
Judgment then ? What ? With all three masts making 
such an everlasting thundering against the side ; and every 
sea breaking over us, fore and aft. Think of Death and 
the Judgment then ? No ! no time to think about Death 
then. Life was what Captain Ahab and I was thinking of ; 
and how to save all hands — how to rig jury-masts — how to 
get into the nearest port ; that was what I was thinking 
of.” 

Bildad said no more, but buttoning up his coat, stalked 
on deck, where we followed him. There he stood, very 
quietly overlooking some sail-makers who were mending a 
top-sail in the waist. Now and then he stooped to pick up 
a patch, or save an end of the tarred twine, which other- 
wise might have been wasted. 


CHAPTER XIX. 

THE PROPHET. 

“ Shipmates, have ye shipped in that ship ?” 

Queequeg and 1 had just left the Pequod, and were 
sauntering away from the water, for the moment each oc- 
cupied with his own thoughts, when the above words were 
put to us by a stranger, who, pausing before us, levelled 
his massive forefinger at the vessel in question. He was 
but shabbily apparelled in faded jacket and patched trow- 
sers ; a rag of a black handkerchief investing his neck. A 


MOBY DICK. 


91 


confluent small-pox had in all directions flowed over his 
face, and left it like the complicated ribbed bed of a torrent, 
when the rushing waters have been dried up. 

“ Have ye shipped in her?” he repeated. 

“You mean the ship Pequod, I suppose,” said I, trying 
to gain a little more time for an uninterrupted look at 
him. 

“Aye, the Pequod — that ship there,” he said, drawing 
back his whole arm, and then rapidly shoving it straight 
out from him, with the fixed bayonet of his pointed finger 
darted full at the object. 

“Yes,” said I, “we have just signed the articles.” 

“ Anything down there about your souls ? ” 

“ About what ? ” 

“ Oh, perhaps you hav’n’t got any,” he said quickly. 
“No matter though, I know many chaps that hav’n’t got 
any, — good luck to ’em ; and they are all the better off for 
it. A soul’s a sort of a fifth wheel to a wagon.” 

“ What are you jabbering about, shipmate ?” said I. 

“ lie’s got enough, though, to make up for all deficiencies 
of that sort in other chaps,” abruptly said the stranger, 
placing a nervous emphasis upon the word he. 

“ Queequeg,” said I, “ let’s go ; this fellow has broken 
loose from somewhere ; he’s talking about something and 
somebody we don’t know.” 

“Stop! ” cried the stranger. “Ye said true — ye hav’n’t 
seen Old Thunder yet, have ye?” 

“Who’s Old Thunder?” said I, again riveted with the in- 
sane earnestness of his manner. 

“ Captain Ahab.” 

“ What ! the captain of our ship, the Pequod ? ” 

“ Aye, among some of us old sailor chaps, he goes by that 
name. Ye hav’n’t seen him yet, have ye ? ” 

“ No, we hav’n’t. He’s sick they say, but is getting better, 
and will be all right again before long.” 

“ All right again before long ! ” laughed the stranger, 
with a solemnly derisive sort of laugh. “ Look ye ; when 
Captain Ahab is all right, then this left arm of mine will be 
all right ; not before.” 

“ What do you know about him ? ” 

“ What did they tell you about him ? Say that ! ” 

“ They didn’t tell much of anything about him ; only I’ve 
heard that he’s a good whale-hunter, and a good captain to 
his crew.” 


92 


MOBY DICK. 


“ That’s true, that’s true — yes, both true enough. But 
you must jump when he gives an order. Step and growl ; 
growl and go — that’s the word with Captain Ahab. But 
nothing about that thing that happened to him off Cape 
Horn, long ago, when he lay like dead for three days and 
nights ; nothing about that deadly skrimmage with .the 
Spaniard afore the altar in Santa ? — heard nothing about 
that, eh ? Nothing about the silver calabash he spat into ? 
And nothing about his losing his leg last voyage, according 
to the prophecy. Didn’t ye hear a word about them mat- 
ters and something more, eh ? No, I don’t think ye did ; 
how could ye? Who knows it? Not all Nantucket, I 
guess. But hows’ever, mayhap, ye’ve heard tell about the 
leg, and how he lost it ; aye, ye have heard of that, I dare 
say. Oh yes, that every one knows a’most — I mean they 
know he’s only one leg ; and that a parmacetti took the 
other off.” 

“ My friend,” said I, “ what all this gibberish of yours 
is about, I don’t know, and I don’t much care ; for it seems 
to me that you must be a little damaged in the head. But 
if you are speaking of Captain Ahab, of that ship there, the 
Pequod, then let me tell you, that I know all about the loss 
of his leg.” 

“ All about it, eh — sure you do ? — all ? ” 

“ Pretty sure.” 

With finger pointed and eye levelled at the Pequod, the 
beggar-like stranger stood a moment, as if in a troubled 
reverie; then starting a little, turned and said: — “ Ye’ve 
shipped, have y e ? N ames down on the papers ? W ell, well, 
what’s signed, is signed ; and what’s to be, will be ; and then 
again, perhaps it won’t be, after all. Anyhow, it’s all fixed 
and arranged a’ready ; and some sailors or other must go 
with him, I suppose ; as well these as any other men, 
God pity ’em ! Morning to ye, shipmates, morning ; 
the ineffable heavens bless ye ; I’m sorry I stopped 
ye.” 

“ Look here, friend,” said I, “ if you have anything im- 
portant to tell us, out with it ; but if you are only trying 
to bamboozle us, you are mistaken in your game ; that’s all 
I have to say.” 

“ And it’s said very well, and I like to hear a chap talk 
up that way ; you are just the man for him — the likes 
of ye. Morning to ye, shipmates, morning ! Oh ! when 
ye get there, tell ’em I’ve concluded not to make one of 
’em.” 


MOBY DICK. 


93 


“ Ah, my dear fellow, you can’t fool us that way — you 
can’t fool us. It is the easiest thing in the world for a man 
to look as if he had a great secret in him.” 

“ Morning to ye, shipmates, morning.” 

“ Morning it is,” said I. “ Come along, Queequeg, let’s 
leave this crazy man. But stop, tell me your name, will 
you ? 

“ Elijah.” 

Elijah ! thought I, and we walked away, both comment- 
ing, after each other’s fashion, upon this ragged old sailor ; 
and agreed that he was nothing but a humbug, trying to be 
a bugbear. But we had not gone perhaps above a hundred 
yards, when chancing to turn a corner, and looking back 
as I did so, who should be seen but Elijah following us, 
though at a distance. Somehow, the sight of him struck me 
so, that I said nothing to Queequeg of his being behind, 
but passed on with my comrade, anxious to see whether 
the stranger would turn the same corner that we did. He 
did ; and then it seemed to me that he was dogging us, 
but with what intent I could not for the life of me imagine. 
This circumstance, coupled with his ambiguous, half-hint- 
ing, half-revealing, shrouded sort of talk, now begat in me 
all kinds of vague wonderments and half-apprehensions, and 
all connected with the Pequod ; and Captain Ahab ; and the 
leg he had lost ; and the Cape Horn fit ; and the silver cala- 
bash ; and what Captain Peleg had said of him, when I left 
the ship the day previous ; and the prediction of the squaw 
Tistig ; and the voyage we had bound ourselves to sail ; 
and a hundred other shadowy things. 

I was resolved to satisfy myself whether this ragged 
Elijah was really dogging us or not, and with that intent 
crossed the way with Queequeg, and on that side of it re- 
traced our steps. But Elijah passed on, without seeming 
to notice us. This relieved me; and once more, and finally 
as it seemed to me, I pronounced him in my heart, a hum- 
bug. 


94 


MOBY DICK. 


CHAPTER XX. 

ALL ASTIR. 

A day or two passed, and there was great activity aboard 
the Pequod. Not only were the old sails being mended, 
but new sails were coming on board, and bolts of canvas, 
and coils of rigging ; in short, everything betokened that 
the ship’s preparations were hurrying to a close. Captain 
Peleg seldom or never went ashore, hut sat in his wigwam 
keeping a sharp look-out upon the hands : Bildad did all 
the purchasing and providing at the stores ; and the men 
employed in the hold and on the rigging were working till 
long after nightfall. 

On the day following Queequeg’s signing the articles, word 
was given at all the inns where the ship’s company were 
stopping, that their chests must he on board before night, 
for there was no telling how soon the vessel might be sail- 
ing. So Queequeg and I got down our traps, resolving, 
however, to sleep ashore till the last. But it seems they 
always give very long notice in these cases, and the ship 
did not sail for several days. But no wonder ; there was 
a good deal to be done, and there is no telling how many 
things to he thought of, before the Pequod was fully 
equipped. 

Every one knows what a multitude of things — beds, 
saucepans, knives and forks, shovels and tongs, napkins, 
nut-crackers, and what not, are indispensable to the busi- 
ness of housekeeping. Just so with whaling, which neces- 
sitates a three-years’ housekeeping upon the wide ocean, 
far from all grocers, costermongers, doctors, bakers, and 
bankers. And though this also holds true of merchant ves- 
sels, yet not by any means to the same extent as with 
whalemen. For besides the great length of the whaling 
voyage, the numerous articles peculiar to the prosecution 
of the fishery, and the umpossibility of replacing them at 
the remote harbours usually frequented, it must be remem- 
bered, that of all ships, whaling vessels are the most exposed 
to accidents of all kinds, and especially to the destruction 


MOBY DICK . 


95 


and loss of the very things upon which the success of the 
voyage most depends. Hence, the spare boats, spare spars, 
and spare lines and harpoons, and spare everything, almost, 
but a spare Captain and duplicate ship. 

At the period of our arrival at the Island, the heaviest stor- 
age of the Pequod had been almost completed; comprising 
her beef, bread, water, fuel, and iron hoops and staves. 
But, as before hinted, for some time there was a continual 
fetching and carrying on boards of divers odds and ends of 
things, both large and small. 

Chief among those who did this fetching and carrying 
was Captain Bildad’s sister, a lean old lady of a most deter- 
mined and indefatigable spirit, but withal very kindhearted, 
who seemed resolved that, if she could help it, nothing 
should be found wanting in the Pequod, after once fairly 
getting to sea. At one time she would come on board with 
a jar of pickles for the steward’s pantry ; another time 
with a bunch of quills for the chief mate’s desk, where he 
kept his log ; a third time with a roll of flannel for the 
small of some one’s rheumatic back. Never did any woman 
better deserve her name, which was Charity — Aunt Charity, 
as everybody called her. And like a sister of charity — 
did this charitable Aunt Charity bustle about hither and 
thither, ready to turn her hand and heart to anything that 
promised to yield safety, comfort, and consolation to all on 
board a ship in which her beloved brother Bildad was con- 
cerned, and in which she herself owned a score or two of 
well-saved dollars. 

But it was startling to see this excellent hearted Quaker- 
ess coming on board, as she did the last day, with a long 
oil-ladle in one hand, and a still longer whaling lance in the 
other. Nor was Bildad himself nor Captain Peleg at all 
backward. As for Bildad, he carried about with him a 
long list of the articles needed and at every fresh arrival, 
down went his mark opposite that article upon the paper. 
Every once in a while Peleg came hobbling out of his 
whalebone den, roaring at the men down the hatchways, 
roaring up to the riggers at the mast-head, and then con- 
cluded by roaring back into his wigwam. 

During these days of preparation, Queequeg and I often 
visited the craft, and as often I asked about Captain Ahab, 
and how he was, and when he was going to come on board 
his ship. To these questions they would answer, that he 
was getting better and better, and was expected aboard 


96 


MOBY DICK. 


every day; meantime, the two Captains, Peleg and 
Bildad, could attend to everything necessary to fit the ves- 
sel for the voyage. If I had been downright honest with 
myself, I would have seen very plainly in my heart that I 
did but half fancy being committed this way to so long a 
voyage, without once laying my eyes on the man who was to 
he the absolute dictator of it, so soon as the ship sailed out 
upon the open sea. But when a man suspects any wrong, 
it sometimes happens that if he be already involved in the 
matter, he insensibly strives to cover up his suspicions even 
from himself. And much this way it was with me. I said 
nothing, and tried to think nothing. 

At last it was given out that some time next day the ship 
would certainly sail. So next morning, Queequeg and I 
took a very early start. 


CHAPTER XXI. 

GOIXG ABOARD. 

It was nearly six o’clock, but only grey imperfect misty 
dawn, when we drew nigh the wharf. 

“ There are some sailors running ahead there, if I see 
right,” said I to Queequeg, “ it can’t be shadows ; she’s off 
by sunrise, I guess ; come on ! ” 

“Avast!” cried a voice, whose owner at the same time 
coming close behind us, laid a hand upon both our shoulders, 
and then insinuating himself between us, stood stooping 
forward a little, in the uncertain twilight, strangely peering 
from Queequeg to me. It was Elijah. 

“ Going aboard ? ” 

“ Hands off, will you,” said I. 

“Lookee here,” said Queequeg, shaking himself, “go 
’way ! ” 

“ Ain’t going aboard, then ? ” 

“Yes, we are,” said I, “but what business is that of 
yours? Do you know, Mr. Elijah, that I consider you a 
little impertinent ? ” 

“Xo, no, no; I wasn’t aware of that,” said Elijah, slowly 
and wonderingly looking from me to Queequeg, with the 
most unaccountable glances. 

“ Elijah,” said I, “ you oblige my friend and me by with- 


MOB Y DICK. 


97 


drawing. We are going to the Indian and Pacific Oceans, 
and would prefer not to be detained.” 

“ Ye be, be ye ? Coming back afore breakfast ? ” 

“ He’s cracked, Queequeg,” said I, “ come on.” 

“ Holloa ! ” cried stationary Elijah, hailing us when we 
had removed a few paces. 

“ Never mind him,” said I, “ Queequeg, come on.” 

But he stole up to us again, and suddenly clapping his 
hand on my shoulder, said — “ Did ye see anything looking 
like men going towards that ship a while ago ? ” 

Struck by this plain matter-of-fact question, I answered, 
saying “Yes, I thought I did see four or five men ; but it 
was too dim to be sure.” 

“ Very dim, very dim,” said Elijah. “ Morning to ye.” 

Once more we quitted him ; but once more he came softly 
after us ; and touching my shoulder again, said, “ See if 
you can find ’em now, will ye ? ” 

“ Find who ? ” 

“ Morning to ye ! morning to ye ! ” he rejoined, again 
moving off. “ Oh ! I was going to warn ye against — but 
never mind, never mind — it’s all one, all in the family too ; 
— sharp frost this morning, ain’t it ? Good-bye to ye. 
Shan’t see ye again very soon, I guess ; unless it’s before 
the Grand Jury.” And with these cracked words he 
finally departed, leaving me, for the moment, in no small 
wonderment at his frantic imjmdence. 

At last, stepping on board the Pequod, we found every- 
thing in profound quiet, not a soul moving. The cabin 
entrance was locked within ; the hatches were all on, and 
lumbered with coils of rigging. Going forward to the fore- 
castle, we found the slide of the scuttle open. Seeing a light, 
we went down, and found only an old rigger there, wrapped 
in a tattered pea-jacket. He was thrown at whole length 
upon two chests, his face downwards and inclosed in his 
folded arms. The profoundest slumber slept upon him. 

“ Those sailors we saw, Queequeg, where can they have 
gone to? ” said I, looking dubiously at the sleeper. But it 
seemed that, when on the wharf, Queequeg had not at all 
noticed what I now alluded to ; hence I would have 
thought myself to have been optically deceived in that 
matter, were it not for Elijah’s otherwise inexplicable 
question. But I beat the thing down ; and again marking 
the sleeper, jocularly hinted to Queequeg that perhaps we 
had best sit up with the body ; telling him to establish 


98 


MOBY DICK. 


himself accordingly. He put his hand upon the sleeper’s 
rear, as though feeling if it was soft enough ; and then, 
without more ado, sat quietly down there. 

“ Gracious ! Queequeg, don’t sit there,” said I. 

“ Oh ! perry dood seat,” said Queequeg, “ my country 
way ; won’t hurt him face.” 

“ Face ! ” said I, “ call that his face ? very benevolent 
countenance then ; but how hard he breathes, he’s neaving 
himself ; get off, Queequeg, you are heavy, it’s grinding 
the face of the poor. Get off, Queequeg ! Look, he’ll 
twitch you off soon. I wonder he don’t wake.” 

Queequeg removed himself to just beyond the head of 
the sleeper, and lighted his tomahawk pipe. I sat at the 
feet. We kept the pipe passing over the sleeper, from one to 
the other. Meanwhile, upon .questioning him in his broken 
fashion, Queequeg gave me to understand that, m his land, 
owing to the absence of settees and sofas of all sorts, the 
king, chiefs, and great people generally, were in the custom 
of fattening some of the lower orders for ottomans ; and to 
furnish a house comfortably in that respect, you had only 
to buy up eight or ten lazy fellows, and lay them round in 
the piers and alcoves. Besides, it was very convenient on 
an excursion ; much better than those garden-chairs which 
are convertible into walking-sticks ; upon occasion, a chief 
calling his attendant, and desiring him to make a settee of 
himself under a spreading tree, perhaps in some damp 
marshy place. 

While narrating these things, every time Queequeg re- 
ceived the tomahawk from me, he flourished the hatchet- 
side of it over the sleeper’s head. 

“ What’s that for, Queequeg ? ” 

“ Perry easy, kill-e ; oh ! perry easy ! ” 

He was going on with some wild reminiscences about 
his tomahawk-pipe, which, it seemed, had in its two uses 
both brained his foes and soothed his soul, when we were 
directly attracted to the sleeping rigger. The strong vapour 
now completely filling the contracted hole, it began to tell 
upon him. He breathed with a sort of muffledness ; then 
seemed troubled in the nose ; then revolved over once or 
twice ; then sat up and rubbed his eyes. 

“ Holloa ! ” he breathed at last, “ who be ye smokers ?” 

“ Shipped men,” answered T, “ when does she sail ? ” 

“ Aye, aye, ye are going in her, be ye ? She sails to-day. 
The Captain came aboard last night.” 


MOB Y DICK. 


99 


“ What Captain ? — Ahab ? ” 

“ Who but him indeed ? ” 

I was going to ask him some further questions concern- 
ing Ahab, when we heard a noise on deck. 

“ Holloa ! Starbuck’ s astir,” said the rigger. “ He’s a 
lively chief mate, that; good man, and a pious; but all 
alive now, I must turn to.” And so saying he went on 
deck, and we followed. 

It was now clear sunrise. Soon the crew came on board 
in twos and threes ; the riggers bestirred themselves ; the 
mates were actively engaged; and several of the shore 
people were busy in bringing various last things on board. 
Meanwhile Captain Ahab remained invisibly enshrined 
within his cabin. 


CHAPTER XXII. 

MERRY CHRISTMAS. 

At length, toward noon, upon the final dismissal of the 
ship’s riggers, and after the Pequod had been hauled out 
from the wharf, and after the ever-thoughtful Charity had 
come off in a whaleboat, with her last gift — a niglit-cap for 
Stubb, the second mate, her brother-in-law, and a spare 
Bible for the steward — after all this, the two captains, Peleg 
and Bildad, issued from the cabin, and turning to the chief 
mate, Peleg said : 

“ Now, Mr. Starbuck, are you sure everything is right ? 
Captain Ahab is all ready — just spoke to him — nothing 
more to be got from shore, eh? Well, call all hands, then. 
Muster ’em aft here — blast ’em ! ” 

“No need of profane words, however great the hurry, 
Peleg,” said Bildad, “but away with thee, friend Starbuck, 
and do our bidding.” 

How now ! Here upon the very point of starting for the 
voyage, Captain Peleg and Captain Bildad were going it 
with a high hand on the quarter-deck, just as if they were 
to be joint-commanders at sea, as well as to all appearances 
in port. And, as for Captain Ahab, no sign of him was 
yet to be seen ; only, they said he was in the cabin. But 
then, the idea was. that his presence was by no means 


100 


MOB Y DICK. 


necessary in getting the ship under weigh, and steering 
her well out to sea. Indeed, as that was not at all his 
proper business, but the pilot’s ; and as he was not yet 
completely recovered — so they said — therefore, Captain 
Ahab stayed below. And all this seemed natural enough ; 
especially as in the merchant service many captains never 
show themselves on deck for a considerable time after 
heaving up the anchor, but remain over the cabin table, 
having a farewell merry-making with their shore friends, 
before they quit the ship for good with the pilot. 

But there was not much chance to think over the matter, 
for Captain Peleg was now all alive. He seemed to do 
most of the talking and commanding, and not Bildad. 

“ Aft here, ye sons of bachelors,” he cried, as the sailors 
lingered at the main-mast. “ Mr. Starbuck, drive ’em aft.” 

“ Strike the tent there ! ” — was the next order. As I 
hinted before, this whalebone marquee was never pitched 
except in port ; and on board the Pequod, for thirty years, 
the order to strike the tent was well known to be the next 
thing to heaving up the anchor. 

“ Man the capstan ! Blood and thunder — jump ! ” — was 
the next command, and the crew sprang for the handspikes. 

Now, in getting under weigh, the station generally oc- 
cupied by the pilot is the forward part of the ship. And 
here Bildad, who, with Peleg, be it known, in addition to 

his other offices, was one of the licensed pilots of the port 

he being suspected to have got himself made a pilot in 
order to save the Nantucket pilot-fee to all the ships he 

was concerned in, for he never piloted any other craft 

Bildad, I say, might now be seen actively engaged in looking 
over the bows for the approaching anchor, and at intervals 
singing what seemed a dismal stave of psalmody, to cheer 
the hands at the windlass, who roared forth some sort of a 
chorus about the girls in Booble Alley, with hearty good- 
will. Nevertheless, not three days previous, Bildad had 
told them that no profane songs would be allowed on board 
the Pequod, particularly in getting under weigh; and 
Charity, his sister, had placed a small choice copy of Watts 
in each seaman’s berth. 

Meantime, overseeing the other part of the ship, Captain 
Peleg ripped and swore astern in the most frightful 
manner. I almost thought he would sink the ship before 
the anchor could be got up; involuntarily I paused on mv 
handspike, and told Queequeg to do the same, thinking of 


MOBY DICK. 


101 


the perils we both ran, in starting on the voyage with such a 
devil for a pilot. I was comforting myself, however, with 
the thought that in pious Bildad might be found some sal- 
vation, spite of his seven hundred and seventy-seventh lay ! 
when I felt a sudden sharp poke in my rear, and turning 
round, was horrified at the apparition of Captain Peleg in 
the act of withdrawing his leg from my immediate vicinity. 
That was my first kick. 

“ Is tha£ the way they heave in the marchant service ? ” 
he roared. “ Spring, thou sheep-head ; spring, and break 
thy backbone ! Why don’t ye spring, I say, all of ye — 
spring ! Quohag ! spring, thou chap with the red whiskers ; 
spring there, Scotch-cap ; spring, thou green pants. 
Spring, I say, all of ye, and spring your eyes out ! ” And 
so saying, he moved along the windlass, here and there 
using his leg very freely, while imperturbable Bildad kept 
leading off with his psalmody. Thinks I, Captain Peleg 
must have been drinking something to-day. 

At last the anchor was up, the sails were set, and off we 
glided. It was a sharp, cold Christmas ; and as the short 
northern day merged into night, we found ourselves almost 
broad upon the wintry ocean, whose freezing spray cased 
us in ice, as in polished armour. The long rows of teeth on 
the bulwarks glistened in the moonlight; and like the 
white ivory tusks of some huge elephant, vast curving 
icicles depended from the bows. 

Lank Bildad, as pilot, headed the first watch, and ever 
and anon, as the old craft deep dived into the green seas, 
and sent the shivering frost all over her, and the winds 
howled, and the cordage rang, his steady notes were heard, — 

“ Sweet fields beyond the swelling flood, 

Stand dressed in living green. 

So to the Jews old Canaan stood, 

While Jordan rolled between.” 

Never did those sweet words sound more sweetly to me 
than then. They were full of hope and fruition. Spite of 
this frigid winter night in' the boisterous Atlantic, spite of 
my wet feet and wetter jacket, there was yet, it then seemed 
to me, many a pleasant haven in store ; and meads and 
glades so eternally vernal, that the grass shot up by the 
spring, untrodden, unwilted, remains at midsummer. 

At last we gained such an offing, that the two pilots were 
needed no longer. The stout sail-boat that had accompanied 
us began ranging alongside. 


102 


MOBY DICK. 


It was curious and not unpleasing, how Peleg and Bildad 
were affected at this juncture, especially Captain Bildad. 
For loath to depart, yet ; very loath to leave, for good, a 
ship bound on so long and perilous a voyage— beyond both 
stormy Capes ; a ship in which some thousands of his hard 
earned dollars were invested ; a ship, in which an old ship- 
mate sailed as captain ; a man almost as old as he, once 
more’ starting to encounter all the terrors of the pitiless 
jaw ; loath to say good-bye to a thing so every way brim- 
ful of every interest to him, — poor old Bildad lingered long ; 
paced the deck with anxious strides ; ran down into the 
cabin to speak another farewell word there ; again came 
on deck, and looked to windward ; looked towards the wide 
and endless waters, only hounded by the far-off unseen 
Eastern Continents ; looked towards the land ; looked aloft ; 
looked right and left ; looked everywhere and nowhere ; 
and at last, mechanically coiling a rope upon its pin, con- 
vulsively grasped stout Peleg by the hand, and holding up 
a lantern, for a moment stood gazing heroically in his face, 
as much as to say, “Nevertheless, friend Peleg, I can stand 
it; yes, I can.” 

As for Peleg himself, he took it more like a philosopher ; 
hut for all his philosophy, there was a tear twinkling in 
his eye, when the lantern came too near. And he, too, did 
not a little run from cabin to deck — now a word below, and 
now a word with Starbuck, the chief mate. 

But, at last, he turned to his comrade, with a final sort 
of look about him, — “ Captain Bildad — come, old shipmate, 
we must go. Back the main-yard there! Boat ahoy! 
Stand by to come close alongside, now ? Careful, careful ! 
come, Bildad, boy — say your last. Luck to ye, Starbuck — 
luck to ye, Mr. S^ubb— luck to ye, Mr. Flask— good-bye, 
and good luck to ye all— and this day three years I’ll have 
a hot supper smoking for ye in old N antucket. Hurrah and 
away ! ” 

“ God bless ye, and have ye in His holy keeping, men,” 
murmured old Bildad, almost incoherently. “ I hope ye’ll 
have fine weather now, so that Captain Ahab may soon be 
moving among ye— a pleasant sun is all he needs, and ye’ll 
have plenty of them in the tropic voyage ye go. Be care- 
ful in the hunt, ye mates. Don’t stake the boats needlessly, 
ye harpooners good white cedar plank is raised full three 
per cent, within the year. Don’t forget your prayers 
either. Mr. Starbuck, mind that cooper don’t waste the 


MOBY DICK. 


103 


spare staves. Oh! the sail-needles are in the green locker! 
Don’t whale it too much a’ Lord’s day, men ; but don’t miss 
a fair chance either, that’s rejecting Heaven’s good gifts. 
Have an eye to the molasses tierce, Mr. Stubb ; it was a little 
leaky, I thought. If ye touch at the islands, Mr. Flask, 
beware of fornication. Good-bye, good-bye! Don’t keep 
that cheese too long down in the hold, Mr. Starbuck ; it’ll 
spoil. Be careful with the butter — twenty cents the pound 
it was, and mind ye, if ” 

“ Come, come, Captain Bildad ; stop palavering, — away ! ” 
and with that, Peleg hurried him over the side, and both 
dropt into the boat. 

Ship and boat diverged ; the cold, damp night-breeze 
blew between ; a screaming gull flew overhead ; the two 
hulls wildly rolled ; we gave three heavy-hearted cheers, 
and blindly plunged like fate into the lone Atlantic. 


CHAPTER XXIII. 

THE LEE SHORE. 

Some chapters back, one Bulkington was spoken of, a 
tall, new-landed mariner, encountered in New Bedford at 
the inn. 

When on that shivering winter’s night, the Pequod thrust 
her vindictive bows into the cold malicious waves, who 
should I see standing at her helm but Bulkington ! I looked 
with sympathetic awe and fearfulness upon the man, who 
in midwinter just landed from a four years’ dangerous voy- 
age, could so unrestingly push off again for still another 
tempestuous term. The land seemed scorching to his feet. 

Wonderfullest things are ever the unmentionable ; deep 
memories yield no epitaphs ; this six-inch chapter is the 
stoneless grave of Bulkington. Let me only say that it 
fared with him as with the storm- tossed ship, that miser- 
ably drives along the leeward land. The port would fain 
give succour ; the port is pitiful ; in the port is safety, com- 
fort, hearthstone, supper, warm blankets, friends, all that’s 
kind to our mortalities. But in that gale, the port, the 
land, is that ship’s direst jeopardy ; she must fly all hos- 


104 


MOBY DICK. 


pitality ; one touch of land, though it but graze the keel, 
would make her shudder through and through. With all 
her might she crowds all sail off shore ; in so doing, fights 
’gainst the very winds that fain would blow her homeward ; 
seeks all the lashed sea’s landlessness again ; for refuge’s 
sake forlornly rushing into peril ; her only friend her bitter- 
est foe ! 

Know ye, now, Bulkington ? Glimpses do ye seem to see 
of that mortally intolerable truth; that all deep, earnest 
thinking is but the intrepid effort of the soul to keep the 
open independence of her sea ; while the wildest winds of 
heaven and earth conspire to cast her on the treacherous, 
slavish shore ? 

But as in landlessness alone resides the highest truth, 
shoreless, indefinite as God — so, better is it to perish in that 
howling infinite, than be ingloriously dashed upon the lee, 
even if that were safety ! For worm-like, then, oh ! who . 
would craven crawl to land ! Terrors of the terrible ! is 
all this agony so vain ? Take heart, take heart, O Bulk- 
ington ! Bear thee grimly, demigod ! Up from the spray 
of thy ocean-perishing— straight up, leaps thy apotheosis! 


CHAPTER XXIV. 


THE ADVOCATE. 

As Queequeg and I are now fairly embarked in this busi- 
ness of whaling ; and as this business of whaling has some- 
how come to be regarded among landsmen as a rather 
unpoetical and disreputable pursuit; therefore, I am all 
anxiety to convince ye, ye landsmen, of the injustice herebv 
done to us hunters of whales. 

In the first place, it may be deemed almost superfluous 
to establish the fact, that among people at large, the busi- 
ness of whaling is not accounted on a level with what are 
called the liberal professions. If a stranger were introduced 
into any miscellaneous metropolitan society, it would but 
slightly advance the general opinion of his merits, were he 
presented to the company as a harpooner, say; and if in 
emulation of the naval officers he should append the initials 


MOBY DICK. 


105 


S. W. F. (Sperm Whale Fishery) to his visiting card, such 
a procedure woull he deemed pre-eminently presuming 
and ridiculous. 

Doubtless one leading reason why the world declines 
honouring us whalemen, is this : they think that, at best, 
our vocation amounts to a butchering sort of business ; and 
that when actively engaged therein, we are surrounded by 
all manner of defilements. Butchers we are, that is true. 
But butchers, also, and butchers, of the bloodiest badge 
have been all Martial Commanders whom the world invari- 
ably delights to honour. And as for the matter of the alleged 
uncleanliness of our business, ye shall soon be initiated into 
certain facts hitherto pretty generally unknown, and which, 
upon the whole, will triumphantly plant the sperm whale- 
ship at least among the cleanliest things of this tidy earth. 
But even granting the charge in question to be true, what 
disordered slippery decks of a whale-ship are comparable 
to the unspeakable carrion of those battle-fields from which 
so many soldiers return to drink in all ladies’ plaudits ? 
And if the idea of peril so much enhances the popular con- 
ceit jof the soldier’s profession ; let me assure ye that many 
a veteran who has freely marched up to a battery, would 
quickly recoil at the apparition of the sperm whale’s vast 
tail, fanning into eddies the air over his head. For what 
are the comprehensible terrors of man compared with the 
interlinked terrors and wonders of God ! 

But, though the world scouts at us whale hunters, yet 
does it unwittingly pay us the profoundest homage ; yea, 
an all-abounding adoration ! for almost all the tapers, lamps, 
and candles that burn round the globe, burn, as before so 
many shrines, to our glory ! 

But look at this matter in other lights ; weigh it in all 
sorts of scales ; see what we whalemen are, and have been. 

Why did the Dutch in De Witt’s time have admirals of 
their whaling fleets? Why did Louis XYI. of France, at 
his own personal expense, fit out whaling ships from 
Dunkirk, and politely invite to that town some score or 
two of families from our own island of Nantucket? Why 
did Britain between the years 1750 and 1788 pay to her 
whalemen in bounties upwards of £1,000,000 ? And lastly, 
how comes it that we whalemen of America now outnum- 
ber all the rest of the banded whalemen in the world ; sail 
a navy of upwards of seven hundred vessels ; manned by 
eighteen thousand men; yearly consuming 4,000,000 of 


MOBY DICK. 


106 

dollars; the ships worth, at the time of sailing, $20,000,- 
000 • and every year importing into onr harbours a well 
reaped harvest of $7,000,000. How comes all this, if there 
be not something puissant in whaling? 

But this is not the half ; look again. 

I freely assert, that the cosmopolite philosopher cannot, 
for his life, point out one single peaceful influence, which 
within the last sixty years has operated more potentially 
upon the whole broad world, taken in one aggregate, than 
the high and mighty business of whaling. One way and 
another, it has begotten events so remarkable in themselves, 
and so continuously momentous in their sequential issues, 
that whaling may well be regarded as that Egyptian mother, 
who bore offspring themselves pregnant from her womb. 
It would be a hopeless, endless task to catalogue all these 
things. Let a handful suffice. For many years past the 
whale-ship has been the pioneer in ferreting out the remot- 
est and least known parts of the earth. She has explored 
seas and archipelagoes which had no chart, where no Cook 
or Vancouver had ever sailed. If American and European 
men-of-war now peacefully ride in once savage harbours, let 
them fire salutes to the honour and the glory of the whale- 
ship, which originally showed them the way, and first in- 
terpreted between them and the savages. They may cele- 
brate as they will the heroes of Exploring Expeditions, 
your Cooks, your Krusensterns ; but I say that scores of 
anonymous Captains have sailed out of Nantucket, that 
were as great, and greater than your Cook and your 
Krusenstern. For in their succourless empty-handedness, 
they, in the heathenish sharked waters, and by the beaches 
of unrecorded, javelin islands, battled with virgin wonders 
and terrors that Cook with all his marines and muskets 
would not willingly have dared. All that is made such a 
flourish of in the old South Sea Voyages, those things were 
but the life-time commonplaces of our heroic Nantucketers. 
Often, adventures which Vancouver dedicates three chap- 
ters to, these men accounted unworthy of being set down 
in the ship’s common log. Ah, the world ! Oh, the world ! 

Until the whale fishery rounded Cape Horn, no commerce 
but colonial, scarcely any intercourse but colonial, was 
carried on between Europe and the long line of the opulent 
Spanish provinces on the Pacific coast. It was the whale- 
man who first broke through the jealous policy of the 
Spanish crown, touching those colonies ; and, if space per- 


MOBY DICK. 


107 


mitted, it might be distinctly shown how from those whale- 
men at last eventuated the liberation of Peru, Chili, and 
Bolivia from the yoke of Old Spain, and the establishment 
of the eternal democracy in those parts. 

That great America on the other side of the sphere, Aus- 
tralia, was given to the enlightened world by the whale- 
man. After its first blunder-born discovery by a Dutch- 
man, all other ships long shunned those shores as pestifer- 
ously barbarous ; but the whale-ship touched there. The 
whale-ship is the true mother of that now mighty colony. 
Moreover, in the infancy of the first Australian settlement, 
the emigrants were several times saved from starvation by 
the benevolent biscuit of the whale-sliip luckily dropping an 
anchor in their waters. The uncounted isles of all Polynesia 
confess the same truth, and do commercial homage to the 
whale-ship, that cleared the way for the missionary and the 
merchant, and in many cases carried the primitive mission- 
aries to their first destinations. If that double-bolted land, 
Japan, is ever to become hospitable, it is the whale-ship 
alone to whom the credit will be due ; for already she is on 
the threshold. 

But if, in the face of all this, you still declare that whal- 
ing has no aesthetically noble associations connected with it, 
then am I ready to shiver fifty lances with you there, and 
unhorse you with a split helmet every time. 

The whale has no famous author, and whaling no famous 
chronicler, you will say. 

The whale no famous author , and whaling no famous 
chronicler ? Who wrote the first account of our Leviathan ? 
Who but mighty Job ! And who composed the first narra- 
tive of a whaling- voyage ? Who, but no less a prince than 
Alfred the Great, wiio, with his own royal pen, took down 
the words from Other, the Norwegian whale-hunter of 
those times ! And who pronounced our glowing eulogy in 
Parliament ? Who, but Edmund Burke ! 

True enough, but then whalemen themselves are poor 
devils ; they have no good blood in their veins. 

No good blood in their veins f They have something 
better than royal blood there. The grandmother of Ben- 
jamin Franklin was Mary Morrel ; afterwards, by marriage, 
Mary Folger, one of the old settlers of Nantucket, and the 
ancestress to a long line of Folgers and harpooners— all 
kith and kin to noble Benjamin — this day darting the 
barbed iron from one side of the world to the other. 


108 


MOBY DICK . 


Good again ; but then all confess that somehow whaling 
is not respectable. 

Whaling not respectable f Whaling is imperial! By 
old English statutory law, the whale is declared “a royal 
fish.”* 

Oh, that’s only nominal ! The whale himself has never 
figured in any grand imposing way. 

The whale never figured in any grand imposing way ? In 
one of the mighty triumphs given to a Roman general upon 
his entering the world’s capital, the bones of a whale brought 
all the way from the Syrian coast, were the most conspicuous 
object in the cymballed procession.* 

Grant it, since you cite it ; but, say what you will, there 
is no real dignity in whaling. 

JYo dignity in whaling f The dignity of our calling the 
very heavens attest. Cetus is a constellation in the South ! 
No more ! Drive down your hat in presence of the Czar, 
and take it off to Queequeg ! No more ! I know a man that, 
in his lifetime, has taken three hundred and fifty whales. I 
account that man more honourable than that great captain 
of antiquity who boasted of taking as many Availed towns. 

And, as for me, if, by any possibility, there be any as yet 
undiscovered prime thing in me ; if I shall ever deserve any 
real repute in that small but high hushed world Avhich I 
might not be unreasonably ambitious of ; if hereafter I shall 
do anything that, upon the whole, a man might rather have 
done than to have left undone ; if, at my death, my executors, 
or more properly my creditors, find any precious MSS. in my 
desk, then here I prospectively ascribe all the honour and 
the glory to whaling ; for a whale-ship was my Yale College 
and my Harvard. 


*See subsequent chapters for something more on this head. 


MOBY DICK. 


109 


CHAPTER XXV. 

POSTSCRIPT. 

In behalf of the dignity of whaling, I would fain advance 
naught but substantiated facts. But after embattling his 
facts, an advocate who should wholly suppress a not un- 
reasonable surmise, which might tell eloquently upon his 
cause — such an advocate, would he not be blameworthy ? 

It is well known that at the coronation of kings and queens, 
even modern ones, a certain curious process of seasoning them 
for their functions is gone through. There is a saltcellar 
of state, so called, and there may be a castor of state. How 
they use the salt, precisely — who knows ? Certain I am, 
however, that a king’s head is solemnly oiled at liis corona- 
tion, even as a head of salad. Can it be, though, that they 
anoint it with a view of making its interior run well, as 
they anoint machinery ? Much might be ruminated here, 
concerning the essential dignity of this regal process, because 
in common life we esteem but meanly and contemptibly a 
fellow who anoints his hair, and palpably smells of that 
anointing. In truth, a mature man who uses hair-oil, unless 
medicinally, that man has probably got a quoggy spot 
in him somewhere. As a general rule, he can’t amount to 
much in his totality. 

But the only thing to be considered here, is this — what 
kind of oil is used at coronations ? Certainly it cannot be 
olive oil, nor macassar oil, nor castor oil, nor bear’s oil, 
nor train oil, nor cod-liver oil. What then can it possibly be, 
but sperm oil in its unmanufactured, unpolluted state, 
the sweetest of all oils ? 

Think of that, ye loyal Britons ! we whalemen supply 
your kings and queens with coronation stuff ! 


110 


MOBY DICK. 


CHAPTER XXVI. 

KNIGHTS AND SQUIRES. 

The chief mate of the Pequod was Starbuck, a native of 
Nantucket, and a Quaker by descent. He was a long, earn- 
est man, and though born on an icy coast, seemed well 
adapted to endure hot latitudes, his flesh being hard as 
twice-baked biscuit. Transported to the Indies, his live 
blood would not spoil like bottled ale. He must have been 
born in some time of general drought and famine, or upon 
one of those fast days for which his state is famous. Only 
some thirty arid summers had he seen ; those summers had 
dried up all his physical superfluousness. But this, his 
thinness, so to speak, seemed no more the token of wasting 
anxieties and cares, than it seemed the indication of any 
bodily blight. It was merely the condensation of the man. 
He was by no means ill-looking ; quite the contrary. His 
pure tight skin was an excellent fit ; and closely wrapped 
up in it, and embalmed with inner health and strength, like 
a revivified Egyptian, this Starbuck seemed prepared to 
endure for long ages to come, and to endure always, as now ; 
for be it Polar snow or torrid ^ sun, like a patent chronome- 
ter, his interior vitality was warranted to do well in all 
climates. Looking into his eyes, you seemed to see there 
the yet lingering images of those thousand-fold perils he 
had calmly confronted through life. A staid, steadfast man 
whose life for the most part was a telling pantomime of 
action, and not a tame chapter of sounds. Yet, for all his 
hardy sobriety and fortitude, there were certain qualities in 
him which at times affected, and in some cases seemed well- 
nigh to overbalance all the rest. Uncommonly conscientious 
for a seaman, and endued with a deep natural reverence, 
the wild watery loneliness of his life did therefore strongly 
incline him to superstition ; but to that sort of superstition, 
which in some organizations seems rather to spring, some- 
how, from intelligence than from ignorance. Outward 
portents and inward presentiments were hi». And if at 
times these things bent the welded iron of his soul, much 
more did his far-away domestic memories of his young Cape 


MOBY DICK. 


Ill 


wife and child, tend to bend him still more from the original 
ruggedness of his nature, and open him still further to those 
latent influences which, in some honest- hearted men, restrain 
the gush of dare-devil daring, so often evinced by others 
in the more perilous vicissitudes of the fishery. “ I will 
have no man in my boat,” said Starbuck, “ who is not afraid 
of a whale.” By this, he seemed to mean, not only that the 
most reliable and useful courage was that which arises from 
the fair estimation of the encountered peril, but that an 
utterly fearless man is a far more dangerous comrade than 
a coward. 

“ Aye, aye,” said Stubb, the second mate, “ Starbuck, 
there, is as careful a man as you’ll find anywhere in this 
fishery.” But we shall ere long see what that word “ care- 
ful ” precisely means when used by a man like Stubb, or 
almost any other whale hunter. 

Starbuck was no crusader after perils ; in him courage 
was not a sentiment ; but a thing simply useful to him, and 
always at hand upon all mortally practical occasions. Be- 
sides, he thought, perhaps, that in this business of whaling, 
courage was one of the great staple outfits of the ship, like 
her beef and her bread, and not to be foolishly wasted. 
Wherefore he had no fancy for lowering for whales after 
sundown ; nor for persisting in fighting a fish that too much 
persisted in fighting him. For, thought Starbuck, I am 
here in this critical ocean to kill whales for my living, and 
not to be killed by them for theirs ; and that hundreds of 
men had been so killed Starbuck well knew. What doom 
was his own father’s? Where, in the bottomless deeps, 
could he find the torn limbs of his brother ? 

With memories like these in him, and, moreover, given 
to a certain superstitiousness, as has been said ; the courage 
of this Starbuck which could, nevertheless, still flourish, 
must indeed have been extreme. But it was not in reason- 
able nature that a man so organized, and with such terrible 
experiences and remembrances as he had; it was not in 
nature that these things should fail in latently engendering 
an element in him, which, under suitable circumstances, 
would break out from its confinement, and burn all his 
courage up. And brave as he might be, it was that sort of 
bravery chiefly, visible in some intrepid men, which, while 
generally abiding firm in the conflict with seas, or winds, or 
whales, or any of the ordinary irrational horrors of the 
world, yet cannot withstand those more terrific, because 


112 


MOB Y DICK. 


more spiritual terrors, which sometimes menace you from 
the concentrating brow of an enraged and mighty man. 

But were the coming narrative to reveal, in any instance, 
the complete abasement of poor Starbuck’s fortitude, scarce 
might I have the heart to write it ; for it is a thing most 
sorrowful; nay shocking, to expose the fall of valour in the 
soul. Men may seem detestable as joint-stock companies 
and nations ; knaves, fools, and murderers there may be ; 
men may have mean and meagre faces ; but man, in the 
ideal, is so noble and so sparkling, such a grand and glow- 
ing creature, that over any ignominious blemish in him all 
his fellows should run to throw their costliest robes. That 
immaculate manliness we feel within ourselves, so far within 
us, that it remains intact though all the outer character 
seem gone ; bleeds with keenest anguish at the undraped 
spectacle of a valour-ruined man. Nor can piety itself, at 
such a shameful sight, completely stifle her upbraidings 
against the permitting stars. But this august dignity I 
treat of, is not the dignity of kings and robes, but that 
abounding dignity which has no robed investiture. Thou 
shalt see it shining in the arm that wields a pick or drives 
a spike ; that democratic dignity which, on all hands, radiates 
without end from God ; Himself ! The great God absolute ! 
The centre and circumference of all democracy ! Ilis omni- 
presence, our divine equality ! 

If, then, to meanest mariners, and renegades and casta- 
ways, I shall hereafter ascribe high qualities, though dark ; 
weave round them tragic graces ; if even the most mourn- 
ful, perchance the most abased, among them all, shall at 
times lift himself to the exalted mounts ; if I shall touch 
that workman’s arm with some ethereal light ; if I shall 
spread a rainbow over his disastrous set of sun ; then 
against all mortal critics bear me out in it, thou Just 
Spirit of Equality, which hast spread one royal mantle of 
humanity over all my kind ! Bear me out in it, thou great 
democratic God ! who didst not refuse to the swart convict, 
Bunyan, the pale, poetic pearl ; Thou who didst clothe with 
doubly hammered leaves of finest gold, the stumped and 
paupered arm of old Cervantes ; Thou who didst pick up 
Andrew J ackson from the pebbles ; who didst hurl him upon 
a warhorse ; who didst thunder him higher than a throne ! 
Thou who, in all Thy mighty, earthly marchings, evercull- 
est Thy selectest champions from the kingly commons: 
bear me out in it, O God ! 


MOBY DICK. 


113 


CHAPTER XXVII. 

KNIGHTS AND SQUIRES. 

Stubb was the second mate. He was a native of Cape 
Cod ; and hence, according to local usage, was called a Cape- 
Cod-man. A happy-go-lucky ; neither craven nor valiant, 
taking perils as they came with an indifferent air ; and while 
engaged in the most imminent crisis of the chase, toiling 
away, calm and collected as a journeyman joiner engaged 
for the year. Good-humoured, easy, and careless, he pre- 
sided over his whale-boat as if the most deadly encounter 
were hut a dinner, and his crew all invited guests. He was 
as particular about the comfortable arrangement of his part 
of the boat, as an old stage-driver is about the snugness of 
his box. When close to the whale, in the very death-lock 
of the fight, he handled his unpitying lance coolly and off- 
handedly, as a whistling tinker his hammer. He would hum 
over his old rigadig tunes while flank and flank with the 
most exasperated monster. Long usage had, for this Stubb, 
converted the jaws of death into an easy-chair. What he 
thought of death itself, there is no telling. Whether he ever 
thought of it at all, might be a question ; but, if he ever did 
chance to cast his mind that way after a comfortable dinner, 
no doubt, like a good sailor, he took it to be a sort of call of 
the watch to tumble aloft, and bestir themselves there, about 
something which he would find out when he obeyed the order, 
and not sooner. 

What, perhaps, with other things, made Stubb such an 
easy-going, unfearing man, so cheerily trudging off with the 
burden of life in a world full’ of grave pedlars, all bowed to 
the ground with their packs ; what helped to bring about 
that almost impious good-humour of his ; that thing must 
have been his pipe. For, like his nose, his short, black little 
pipe was one of the regular features of his face. You would 
almost as soon have expected him to turn out of his bunk 
without his nose as without his pipe. He kept a whole row 
of pipes there ready loaded, stuck in a rack, within easy 
reach of his hand ; and, whenever he turned in, he smoked 

8 


114 


MOBY DICK. 


them all out in succession, lighting one from the other to 
the end of the chapter ; then loading them again to be in 
readiness anew. For, when Stubb dressed, instead of first 
putting his legs into his trowsers, he put his pipe into his 
mouth. 

I say this continual smoking must have been one cause, 
at least, of his peculiar disposition ; for every one knows 
that this earthly air, whether ashore or afloat, is terribly 
infected with the nameless miseries of the numberless mor- 
tals who have died exhaling it ; and as in time of the cholera, 
some people go about with a camphorated handkerchief to 
their mouths ; so, likewise, against all mortal tribulations, 
Stubb’s tobacco smoke might have operated as a sort of 
disinfecting agent. 

The third mate was Flask, a native of Tisbury, in Martha’s 
Vineyard. A short, stout, ruddy young fellow, very pugna- 
cious concerning whales, who somehow seemed to think 
that the great leviathans had personally and hereditarily 
affronted him ; and therefore, it was a sort of point of 
honour with him, to destroy them whenever encountered. 
So utterly lost was he to all sense of reverence for the many 
marvels of their majestic bulk and mystic ways ; and so 
dead to anything like an apprehension of any possible 
danger from encountering them ; that in his poor opinion, 
the wondrous whale was but a species of magnified mouse, 
or at least water-rat, requiring only a little circumvention and 
some small application of time and trouble in order to kill 
and boil. This ignorant, unconscious fearlessness of his made 
him a little waggish in the matter of whales ; he followed 
these fish for the fun of it ; and a three years’ voyage round 
Cape Horn was only a jolly joke that lasted that length of 
time. As a carpenter’s nails are divided into wrought nails 
and cut nails ; so mankind may be similarly divided. Little 
Flask was one of the wrought ones ; made to clinch tight 
and last long. They called him King- Post on board of the 
Pequod ; because in form he could be well likened to the 
short, square timber known by that name in Arctic whalers ; 
and which by the means of many radiating side timbers 
inserted into it, serves to brace the ship against the icy con- 
cussions of those battering seas. 

Now these three mates — Starbuck, Stubb, and Flask, were 
momentous men. They it was who by universal prescrip- 
tion commanded three of the Pequod’s boats as headsmen. 
In that grand order of battle in which Captain Aliab would 


MOBY DICK. 


115 


probably marshal his forces to descend on the whales, these 
three headsmen were as captains of companies. Or, being 
armed with their long keen whaling spears, they were as a 
picked trio of lancers ; even as the harpooners were Singers 
of javelins. 

And since in this famous fishery, each mate or heads- 
man, like a Gothic Knight of old, is always accompanied by 
his boatsteerer or harpooner, who in certain conjunctures 
provides him with a fresh lance, when the former one has 
been badly twisted, or elbowed in the assault ; and more- 
over, as there generally subsists between the two, a close 
intimacy and friendliness ; it is therefore but meet, that in 
this place we set down who the Pequod’s harpooners were, 
and to what headsman each of them belonged. 

First of all was Queequeg, whom Starbuck, the chief 
mate, had selected for his squire. But Queequeg is already 
known. 

Next was Tashtego, an unmixed Indian from Gay Head, 
the most westerly promontory of Martha’s Vineyard, where 
there still exists the last remnant of a village of red men, 
which has long supplied the neighboring island of Nan- 
tucket with many of her most daring harpooners. In 
the fishery, they usually go by the generic name of Gay- 
Headers. Tashtego’s long, lean, sable hair, his high cheek 
bones, and black rounding eyes — for an Indian, Oriental in 
their largeness, but Antarctic in their glittering expression 
— all this sufficiently proclaimed him an inheritor of the 
unvitiated blood of those proud warrior hunters, who, in 
quest of the great New England moose, had scoured, bow 
in hand, the aboriginal forests of the main. But no 
longer snuffing in the trail of the wild beasts of the wood- 
land, Tashtego now hunted in the wake of the great whales 
of the sea ; the unerring harpoon of the son fitly replacing 
the infallible arrow of the sires. To look at the tawny 
brawn of his lithe snaky limbs, you would almost have 
credited the superstitions of some of the earlier Puritans, 
and half believed this wild Indian to be a son of the Prince 
of the Powers of the Air. Tashtego was Stubb the second 
mate’s squire. 

Third among the harpooners was Daggoo, a gigantic, 
coal-black negro- savage, with a lion-like tread — an Ahasu- 
erus to behold. Suspended from his ears were two golden 
hoops, so large thatdhe sailors called them ring-bolts, and 
would talk of securing the top- sail halyards to them. In 


116 


MOBY DICK . 


his youth Daggoo had voluntarily shipped on board of a 
whaler, lying in a lonely bay jpn his native coast. And 
never having been anywhere in the world but in Africa, 
Nantucket, and the pagan harbors most frequented by 
whalemen ; and having now led for many years the bold 
life of the fishery in ships of owners uncommonly heedful 
of what manner of men they shipped ; Daggoo retained all 
his barbaric virtues, and erect as a giraffe, moved about 
the decks in all the pomp of six feet five in his socks. 
There was a corporeal humility in looking up at him ; and 
a white man standing before him seemed a white flag come 
to beg truce of a fortress. Curious to tell, this imperial 
negro, Ahasuerus Daggoo, was the squire of little Flask, 
who looked like a chess-man beside him. As for the residue 
of the Pequod’s company, be it said, that at the present 
day not one in two of the many thousand men before the 
mast employed in the American whale fishery, are Ameri- 
cans born, though pretty nearly all the officers are. Here- 
in it is the same with the American whale fishery as with 
the American army and military and merchant navies, and 
the engineering forces employed in the construction of the 
American Canals and Railroads. The same, I say, because 
in all these cases the native American liberally provides 
the brains, the rest of the world as generously supplying 
the muscles. No small number of these whaling seamen 
belong to the Azores, where the outward-bound Nantucket 
whalers frequently touch to augment their crews from the 
hardy peasants of those rocky shores. In like manner, 
the Greenland whalers sailing out of Hull or London, put 
in at the Shetland Islands, to receive the full complement 
of their crew. Upon the passage homewards, they drop 
them there again. How it is, there is no telling, but 
Islanders seem to make the best whalemen. They were 
nearly all Islanders in the Pequod, Isolatoes too, I call such, 
not acknowledging the common continent of men, but each 
Isolato living on a separate continent of his own. Yet 
now, federated along one keel, what a set these Isolatoes 
were ! An Anacliarsis Clootz deputation from all the isles 
of the sea, and all the ends of the earth, accompanying Old 
Ahab in the Pequod to lay the world’s grievances before 
that bar from which not very many of them ever come 
back. Black Little Pip — he never did — oh, no ! he went 
before. Poor Alabama boy ! On the grim Pequod’s fore- 
castle, ye shall ere long see him, beating his tambourine ; 


MOBY DICK . 


117 


prelusive of the eternal time, when sent for, to the great 
quarter-deck on high, he w*is bid strike in with angels, and 
beat his tambourine in glory ; called a coward here, hailed 
a hero there ! 


CHAPTER XXVIII. 

AHAB. 

For several days after leaving Xantucket, nothing above 
hatches was seen of Captain Aliab. The mates regularly 
relieved each other at the watches, and for aught that 
could be seen to the contrary, they seemed to be the only 
commanders of the ship ; only they sometimes issued from 
the cabin with orders so sudden and peremptory, that after 
all it was plain they but commanded vicariously. Yes, 
their supreme lord and dictator was there, though hitherto 
unseen by any eyes not permitted to penetrate into the 
now sacred retreat of the cabin. 

Every time I ascended to the deck from my watches 
below, I instantly gazed aft to mark if any strange face 
were visible ; for my first vague disquietude touching the 
unknown captain, now in the seclusion of the sea, became 
almost a perturbation. This was strangely heightened at 
times by the ragged Elijah’s diabolical incoherences unin- 
vitedly recurring to me, with a subtle energy I could not 
have before conceived of. But poorly could I withstand 
them, much as in other moods I was almost ready to smile 
-at the solemn whimsicalities of that outlandish prophet of 
the wharves. But whatever it was of apprehensiveness or 
uneasiness — to call it so — which I felt, yet whenever I 
came to look about me in the ship, it seemed against all 
warrantry to cherish such emotions. For though the har- 
pooners, with the great body of the crew, were a far more 
barbaric, heathenish, and motley set than any of the tame 
merchant-ship companies which my previous experiences 
had made me acquainted with, still I ascribed this — and 
rightly ascribed it — to the fierce uniqueness of the very 
nature of that wild Scandinavian vocation in which I had 
so abandonedly embarked. 'But it was especially the 
aspect of the three chief officers of the ship, the mates, 


118 


MOBY DICK. 


which was most forcibly calculated to allay these colour- 
less misgivings, and induce confidence and cheerfulness in 
every presentment of the voyage. Three better, more 
likely sea-officers and men, each in his own different way, 
could not readily be found, and they were every one of 
them Americans; a Nantucketer, a Vineyarder, a Cape 
man. Now, it being Christmas when the ship shot from 
out her harbour, for a space we had biting Polar weather, 
though all the time running away from it to the south- 
ward ; and by every degree and minute of latitude which 
we sailed, gradually leaving that merciless winter, and all 
its intolerable weather behind us. It was one of those less 
lowering, but still grey and gloomy enough mornings of 
the transition, when with a fair wind the ship was rushing 
through the water with a vindictive sort of leaping and 
melancholy rapidity, that as I mounted to the deck at the 
call of thQ forenoon watch, so soon as I levelled my glance 
towards the taffrail, foreboding shivers ran over me. 
Reality outran apprehensions ; Captain Ahab stood upon 
his quarter-deck. 

There seemed no sign of common bodily illness about 
him, nor of the recovery from any. He looked like a man 
cut away from the stake, when the fire has overrunningly 
wasted all the limbs without consuming them, or taking 
away one particle from their compacted aged robustness. 
His whole high, broad form, seemed made of solid bronze, 
and shaped in an unalterable mould, like Cellini’s cast Per- 
seus. Threading its way out from among his grey hairs, 
and continuing right down one side of his" tawny scorched 
face and neck, till it disappeared in his clothing, you saw a 
slender rod-like mark, lividly whitish. It resembled that 
perpendicular seam sometimes made in the straight, lofty 
trunk of a great tree, when the upper lightning tearingly 
darts down it, and without wrenching a single twig, peels 
and grooves out the bark from top to bottom, ere running 
off into the soil, leaving the tree still greenly alive, but 
branded.. Whether that mark was born with him, or 
whether it was the scar left by some desperate wound, no 
one could certainly say. By some tacit consent, throughout 
the voyage little or no allusion was made to it, especially 
by the mates. But once Tashtego’s senior, an old Gay- 
Head Indian among the crew, superstitiously asserted that 
not till he was full forty years old did Ahab become that 
way branded, and then it came upon him, not in the fury 


MOBY DICK. 


119 


of any mortal fray, but in an elemental strife at sea. Yet, 
this wild hint seemed inferentially negatived, by what a 
grey Manxman insinuated, an old sepulchral man, who, 
having never before sailed out of Nantucket, had never ere 
this laid eye upon wild Ahab. Nevertheless, the old sea- 
traditions, the immemorial credulities, popularly invested 
this old Manxman with preternatural powers of discern- 
ment. So that no white sailor seriously contradicted him 
when he said that if ever Captain Ahab should be tran- 
quilly laid out — which might hardly come to pass, so he 
muttered — then, whoever should do that last office for the 
dead, would find a birth-mark on him from crown to sole. 

So powerfully did the whole grim aspect of Ahab affect 
me, and the livid brand which streaked it, that for the first 
few moments I hardly noted that not a little of this over- 
bearing grimness was owing to the barbaric white leg upon 
which he partly stood. It had previously come to me that 
this ivory leg had at sea been fashioned from the polished 
bone of the sperm whale’s jaw. “ Aye, he was dismasted 
off Japan,” said the old Gay-Head Indian once ; “ but like 
his dismasted craft, he shipped another mast without com- 
ing home for it. He has a quiver of ’em.” 

I was struck with the singular posture he maintained. 
Upon each side of the Pequod’s quarter-deck, and pretty 
close to the mizzen shrouds, there was an auger hole, bored 
about half an inch or so, into the plank. His bone leg 
steadied in that hole ; one arm elevated, and holding by a 
shroud ; Captain Ahab stood erect, looking straight out 
beyond the ship’s ever-pitching prow. There was an in- 
finity of firmest fortitude, a determinate, unsurrenderable 
wilfulness, in the fixed and fearless, forward dedication of 
that glance. Not a word he spoke ; nor did his officers say 
aught to him ; though by all their minutest gestures and 
expressions, they plainly showed the uneasy, if not painful, 
consciousness of being under a troubled master-eye. And 
not only that, but moody stricken Ahab stood before them 
with a crucifixion in his face ; in all the nameless regal 
overbearing dignity of some mighty woe. 

Ere long, from his first visit in the air, he withdrew into 
his cabin. But after that morning, he was every day visi- 
ble to the crew ; either standing in his pivot-hole, or seated 
upon an ivory stool he had ; or heavily walking the deck. 
As the sky grew less gloomy ; indeed, began to grow a little 
genial, he became still less and less a recluse ; as if, when 


120 


MOBY DICK. 


the ship had sailed from home, nothing’ hut the dead win- 
try bleakness of the sea had then kept him so secluded. 
And, by and by, it came to pass, that he was almost contin- 
ually in the air ; but, as yet, for all that he said, or percep- 
tibly did, on the at last sunny deck, he seemed as unnecessary 
there as another mast. But the Pequod was only making 
a passage now ; not regularly cruising ; nearly all whaling 
preparatives needing supervision the mates were fully com- 
petent to, so that there was little or nothing, out of himself, 
to employ or excite Ahab, now ; and thus chase away, for 
that one interval, the clouds that layer upon layer were^ 
piled upon his brow, as ever all clouds choose the loftiest 
peaks to pile themselves upon. 

Nevertheless, ere long, the warm, warbling persuasive- 
ness of the pleasant, holiday weather we came to, seemed 
gradually to charm him from his mood. For, as when the 
red-cheeked, dancing girls, April and May, trip home to the 
wintry, misanthropic woods; even the barest, ruggedest, 
most thunder-cloven old oak will at least send forth some 
few green sprouts, to welcome such glad-hearted visitants ; 
so Ahab did, in the end, a little respond to the playful al- 
lurings of that girlish air. More than once did he put forth 
the faint blossom of a look, which, in any other man, would 
have soon flowered out in a smile. 


CHAPTER XXIX. 

ENTER AHAB ; TO HIM, STUBB. 

Some days elapsed, and ice and icebergs all astern, the 
Pequod now went rolling through the bright Quito spring, 
which, at sea, almost perpetually reigns on the threshold 
of the eternal August of the Tropic. The warmly cool, 
clear, ringing, perfumed, overflowing, redundant days, were 
as crystal goblets of Persian sherbet, heaped up— flaked up, 
with rose-water snow. The starred and stately nights 
seemed haughty dames in jewelled velvets, nursing at home 
in lonely pride, the memory of their absent conquering 
Earls, the golden helmeted suns ! For sleeping man, ’twas 
hard to choose between such winsome days and such 


MOBY DICK. 


121 


seducing* nights. But all the witcheries of that unwaning 
weather did not merely lend new spells and potencies to 
the outward world. Inward they turned upon the soul, 
especially when the still mild hours of eve came on; then, 
memory shot her crystals as the clear ice most forms of 
noiseless twilights. And all these subtle agencies, more 
and more they wrought on Ahah’s texture. 

Old age is always wakeful; as if, the longer linked with 
life, the less man has to do with aught that looks like death. 
Among sea-commanders, the old greybeards will oftenest 
leave their berths to visit the night-cloaked deck. It was so 
with Ahah; only that now, of late, he seemed so much to 
live in the open air, that truly speaking, his visits were 
more to the cabin, than from the cabin to the planks. “ It 
feels like going down into one’s tomb,” — he would mutter 
to himself, — “ for an old captain like me to be descending 
this narrow scuttle, to go to my grave-dug berth.” . 

So, almost every twenty-four hours, when the watches of 
the night were set, and the band on deck sentinelled the 
slumbers of the band below ; and when if a rope was to be 
hauled upon the forecastle, the sailors flung it not rudely 
down, as by day, hut with some cautiousness dropt it to its 
place, for fear of disturbing their slumbering shipmates ; 
when this sort of steady quietude would begin to prevail, 
habitually, the silent steersman would watch the cabin- 
scuttle; and ere long the old man would emerge, gripping at 
the iron banister, to help his crippled way. Some consider- 
ating touch of humanity was in him ; for at times like these, 
he usually abstained from patrolling the quarter-deck ; be- 
cause to his wearied mates, seeking repose within six inches 
of his ivory heel, such would have been the reverberating 
crack and din of that bony step, that their dreams would 
have been of the crunching teeth of sharks. But once, the 
mood was on him too deep for common regardings ; and as 
with heavy, lumber-like pace he was measuring the ship 
from taffrail to mainmast, Stubb, the odd second mate came 
up from below, and with a certain unassured, deprecating 
humourousness, hinted that if Captain Ahab was pleased to 
walk the planks, then, no one could say nay ; but there 
might be some way of muffling the noise; hinting something 
indistinctly and hesitatingly about a globe of tow, and the 
insertion into it, of the ivory heel. Ah ! Stubb, thou did’st 
not know Ahab then. 

“ Am I a cannon-ball, Stubb,” said Ahab, “ that thou 


122 


MOBY DICK. 


wouldst wad me that fashion? But go thy ways; Iliad 
forgot. Below to thy nightly grave ; where such as ye sleep 
between shrouds, to use ye to the filling one at last. — Down, 
dog, and kennel ! ” 

Starting at the unforeseen concluding exclamation of 
the so suddenly scornful old man, Stubb was speechless 
a moment ; then said excitedly, “ I am not used to 
be spoken to that way, sir; I do but less than half like it, 
sir.” x 

“Avast!” gritted Ahab between his set teeth, and 
violently moving away, as if to avoid some passionate 
temptation. 

“No, sir; not yet,” said Stubb, emboldened, “ I will not 
tamely be called a dog, sir.” 

“ Then be called ten times a donkey, and a mule, and an 
ass, and begone, or I’ll clear the world of thee ! ” 

As he said this, Ahab advanced upon him with such 
overbearing terrors in his aspect, that Stubb involuntarily 
retreated. 

“ I was never served so before without giving a hard 
blow for it,” muttered Stubb, as he found himself descend- 
ing the cabin scuttle. “ It’s very queer. Stop, Stubb ; 
somehow, now, I don’t well know whether to go back and 
strike him, or — what’s that ? — down here on my knees and 
pray for him? Yes, that was the thought coming up in 
me ; but it would be the first time I ever did pray. It’s 
queer ; very queer ; and he’s queer too ; aye, take him fore 
and aft, he’s about the queerest old man Stubb ever sailed 
with. How he flashed at me ! — his eyes like powder-pans 1 
is he mad? Anyway there’s something on his mind, as 
sure as there must be something on a deck when it cracks. 
He ain’t in his bed now, either, more than three hours out 
of the twenty-four ; and he don’t sleep then. Didn’t that 
Dough-Boy, the steward, tell me that of a morning he 
always finds the old man’s hammock clothes all rumpled 
and tumbled, and the sheets down at the foot, and the 
coverlid almost tied into knots, and the pillow a sort of 
frightful hot, as though a baked brick had been on it ? A 
hot old man! I guess he’s got what some folks ashore call 
a conscience ; it’s a kind of Tic-dolly-row they say — worse 
nor a toothache. Well, well ; I don’t know what it is, but 
the Lord keep me from catching it. He’s full of riddles ; I 
wonder what he goes into the after-hold for, every night, 
as Dough-Boy tells me he suspects ; what’s that for, I 


MOBY DICK. 


123 


should like to know ? Who’s made appointments with him 
in the hold? Ain’t that queer, now? But there’s no tell- 
ing, it’s the old game — Here goes for a snooze. Damn me, 
it’s worth a fellow’s while to he born into the world, if only 
to fall right asleep. And now that I think of it, that’s 
about the first thing babies do, and that’s a sort of queer, 
too. Damn me, but all things are queer, come to think of 
’em. But that’s against my principles. Think not, is my 
eleventh commandment ; and sleep when you can, is my 
twelfth — So hear goes again. But how’s that ? didn’t he 
call me a dog ? blazes ! he called me ten times a donkey, 
and piled a lot of jackasses on top of that! He might as 
well have kicked me, and done with it. Maybe he did kick 
me, and I didn’t observe it, I was so taken all aback with 
his brow, somehow. It flashed like a bleached bone. 
What the devil’s the matter with me ? I don’t stand right 
on my legs. Coming afoul of that old man has a sort of 
turned me wrong side out. By the Lord, I must have been 
dreaming, though — How? how ? how? — but the only way’s 
to stash it ; so here goes to hammock again ; and in the 
morning, I’ll see how this plaguev juggling thinks over by 
daylight.” 


CHAPTER XXX. 

THE PIPE. 

When Stubb had departed, Ahab stood for a while lean- 
ing over the bulwarks ; and then, as had been usual with 
him of late, calling a sailor of the watch, he sent him below 
for his ivory stool, and also his pipe. Lighting the pipe at 
the binnacle lamp and planting the stool on the weather 
side of the deck, he sat and smoked. 

In old Xorse times, the thrones of the sea-loving Danish 
kings were fabricated, saith tradition, of the tusks of the 
narwhal. How could one look at Ahab then, seated on 
that tripod of bones, without bethinking him of the royalty 
it symbolised? For a Khan of the plank, and a king of 
the sea, and a great lord of Leviathans was Ahab. 

Some moments passed, during which the thick vapor 
came from his mouth in quick and constant puffs, which 


MOBY DICK. 


124 

blew back again into his face. “ How now,” lie soliloquised 
at last, withdrawing the tube, “this smoking no longer 
soothes. Oh, my pipe ! hard must it go with me if thy 
charm be gone! Here have I been unconsciously toiling, 
not pleasuring, — aye, and ignorantly smoking to windward 
all the while ; to windward, and with such nervous .whiffs, 
as if, like the dying whale, my final jets were the strongest 
and fullest of trouble. What business have I with this 
pipe? This thing that is meant for sereneness, to send up 
mild white vapors among mild white hairs, not among torn 
iron-grey locks like mine. I’ll smoke no more.” 

He tossed the still lighted pipe into the sea. The fire 
hissed in the waves ; the same instant the ship shot by the 
bubble the sinking pipe made. With slouched hat, Ahab 
lurchingly paced the planks. 


CHAPTER XXXI. 

QUEEN MAB. 

Next morning Stubb accosted Flask. 

“Such a queer dream, King-Post, I never had. You 
know the old man’s ivory leg, well I dreamed he kicked me 
with it ; and when I tried to kick back, upon my soul, my 
little man, I kicked my leg right off ! And then, presto ! 
Ahab seemed a pyramid, and I, like a blazing fool, kept 
kicking at it. But what was still more curious, Flask — you 
know how curious all dreams are — through all this rage 
that I was in, I somehow seemed to be thinking to myself, 
that after all, it was not much of an insult, that kick from 
Ahab. ‘Why,’ thinks I, ‘ what’s the row ? It’s not a real 
leg, only a false leg.’ And there’s a mighty difference be- 
tween a living thump and a dead thump. That’s what 
makes a blow from the hand, Flask, fifty times more savage 
to bear than a blow from a cane. The living member — that 
makes the living insult, my little man. And thinks I to 
myself all the while, mind, while I was stubbing my silly 
toes against that cursed pyramid— so confoundedly contra- 
dictory was it all, all the while, I say, I was thinking to 
myself, ‘ what’s his leg now, but a cane— a whalebone cane. 


MOBY DICK. 


125 


Yes,’ thinks I, ‘ it was only a playful cudgelling — in fact, 
only a wlialeboning that he gave me — not a base kick. Be- 
sides,’ thinks I, ‘ look at it once ; why, the end of it — the 
foot part — what a small sort of end it is ; whereas, if a 
broad-footed farmer kicked me, there! s a devilish broad in- 
sult. But this insult is whittled down to a point only.’ 
But now comes the greatest joke of the dream, Flask. 
While I was battering away at the pyramid, a sort of bad- 
ger-haired old merman, with a hump on his back, takes me 
by the shoulders, and slews me round. ‘What are you 
’bout?’ says he. Slid! man, but I was frightened. Such 
a phiz ! But, somehow, next moment I was over the fright. 
‘ What am I about ? ’ says I at last. ‘ And what business is 
that of yours, I should like to know, Mr. Humpback ? Do 
you want a kick ? ’ By the lord, Flask, I had no sooner 
said that, than he turned round his stern to me, bent over, 
and dragging up a lot of seaweed he had for a clout — what 
do you think, I saw ? — why thunder alive, man, his stern 
was stuck full of marlinspikes, with the points out. Says 
I, on second thoughts, ‘ I guess I won’t kick you, old fellow.’ 
‘ Wise Stubb,’ said he, ‘ wise Stubb ; ’ and kept muttering it 
all the time, a sort of eating of his own gums like a chimney 
hag. Seeing he wasn’t going to stop saying over his ‘ wise 
Stubb, wise Stubb’ I thought I might as well fall to kicking 
the pyramid again. But I had only just lifted my foot for 
it, when he roared out, ‘ Stop that kicking ! ’ ‘ Halloa,’ says I, 
‘ what’s the matter now, old fellow ? ’ ‘ Look ye here,’ says 

he ; ‘ let’s argue the insult. Captain Ahab kicked ye, didn’t 
he?’ ‘Yes, he did,’ says I — ‘right here it was.’ ‘Very 
good,’ says he — ‘he used his ivory leg, didn’t he?’ ‘Yes, 
he did,’ says I. ‘Well then,’ says he, ‘wise Stubb, what 
have you to complain of? Didn’t he kick with right good 
will ? it wasn’t a common pitch pine leg he kicked with, 
was it? No, you were kicked by a great man, and with a 
beautiful ivory leg, Stubb. It’s an honour ; I consider it an 
honour. Listen, wise Stubb. In old England the greatest 
lords think it great glory to be slapped by a queen, and 
made garter-knights of ; but, be your boast, Stubb, that ye 
were kicked by old Ahab, and made a wise man of. Re- 
member what I say ; be kicked by him ; account his kicks 
honours ; and on no account kick back ; for you can’t help 
yourself, wise Stubb. Don’t you see that pyramid ? ’ W ith 
that, he all of a sudden seemed somehow, in some queer 
fashion, to swim off into the air. 1 snored ; rolled over ; 


126 


MOBY DICK. 


and there I was in my hammock ! Now, what do you think 
of that dream, Flask ? ” 

“ I don’t know ; it seems a sort of foolish to me, tho’.” 

« May be ; may he. But it’s made a wbse man of me, 
Flask. ” D’ye see Ahab standing there, sideways looking 
over the stern ? Well, the best thing yop can do, Flask, is 
to let that old man alone ; never speak to him, whatever he 
says. Halloa! what’s that he shouts ? Hark!” 

“ Mast-head, there ! Look sharp, all of ye ! there are 
whales hereabouts ! If ye see a white one, split your lungs 
for him ! ” 

“ What d’ye think of that now, Flask ? ain’t there a small 
drop of something queer about that, eh ? A white whale — 
did ye mark that, man ? Look ye — there’s something spe- 
cial in the wind. Stand by for it, Flask. Ahab has that 
that’s bloody on his mind. But, mum ; he comes this way.” 


CHAPTER XXXII. 

CETOLOGY. 

Already we are boldly launched upon the deep ; but 
soon we shall be lost in its unshored, harbourless immensi- 
ties. Ere that come to pass ; ere the Pequod’s weedy hull 
rolls side by side with the barnacled hulls of the leviathan ; 
at the outset it is but well to attend to a matter almost in- 
dispensable to a thorough appreciative understanding of 
the more special leviathanic revelations and illusions of all 
sorts which are to follow. 

It is some systematised exhibition of the whale in his 
broad genera, that I would now fain put before you. Yet 
is it no easy task. The classification of the constituents of 
a chaos, nothing less is here essayed. Listen to what the 
best and latest authorities have laid down. 

“No branch of Zoology is so much involved as that 
which is entitled Cetology,” says Captain Scoresby, A. D. 

“ It is n °t my intention, were it in my power, to enter 
into the inquiry as to the true method of dividing the 
cetacea into groups and families. * * * Utter con- 


MOB Y DICK. 


127 


fusion exists among the historians of this animal ” (sperm 
whale), says Surgeon Beale. A. I). 1839. 

“ Unfitness to pursue our research in the unfathomable 
waters.” “ I mpenetrable veil covering our knowledge of the 
cetacea.” “ A field strewn with thorns.” “ All these in- 
complete indications but serve to torture us naturalists.” 

Thus speak of the whale, the great Cuvier, and John 
Hunter, and Lesson, those lights of zoology and anatomy. 
Nevertheless, though of real knowledges there be little, yet 
of books there are plenty ; and so in some small degree, 
with cetology, or the science of whales. Many are the 
men, small and great, old and new, landsmen and seamen, 
who have at large or in little, written of the whale. Run 
over a few : — The Authors of the Bible ; Aristotle ; Pliny ; 
Aldrovandi ; Sir Thomas Browne ; Gesner ; Ray ; Linnaeus ; 
Rondeletius ; Willoughby ; Green ; Artedi ; Sibbald ; Bris- 
son ; Marten ; Lacepede ; Bonneterre ; Desmarest ; Baron 
Cuvier ; Frederick Cuvier ; John Hunter ; Owen ; Scores- 
by ; Beale ; Bennett ; J. Ross Browne ; the Author of 
Miriam Coffin ; Olmstead ; and the Rev. T. Cheever. But to 
what ultimate generalising purpose all these have written, 
the above cited extracts will show. 

Of the names in this list of whale authors, only those 
following Owen ever saw living whales ; and but one of 
them was a real professional harpooner and whaleman. I 
mean Captain Scoresby . On the separate subject of the Green- 
land or right- whale, he is the best existing authority. But 
Scoresby knew nothing and says nothing of the great sperm 
whale, compared with which the Greenland whale is almost 
unworthy mentioning. And here be it said, that the Green- 
land whale is an usurper upon the throne of the seas. He 
is not even by any means the largest of the whales. Yet, 
owing to the long priority of his claims, and the profound 
ignorance which, till some seventy years back, invested 
the then fabulous or utterly unknown sperm-whale, and 
which ignorance to this present day still reigns in all but 
some few scientific retreats and whale-ports ; this usurpation 
has been every way complete. Reference to nearly all the 
leviathanic allusions in the great poets of past days, will 
satisfy you that the Greenland whale, without one rival, 
was to them the monarch of the seas. But the time has at 
last come for a new proclamation. This is Charing Cross ; 
hear ye ! good people all, — the Greenland whale is deposed, 
— the great sperm whale now reigneth ! 


128 


MOBY DICK. 


There are only two books in being- which at all pretend 
to put the living sperm whale before you, and at the same 
time, in the remotest degree succeed in the attempt. Those 
books are Beal’s and Bennett’s ; both in their time surgeons 
to English South-Sea whale-ships, and both exact and reli- 
able men. The original matter touching the sperm whale 
to be found in their volumes is necessarily small ; but so 
far as it goes, it is of excellent quality, though mostly con- 
fined to scientific description. As yet, however, the sperm 
whale, scientific or poetic, lives not complete in any liter- 
ature. Far above all other hunted whales, his is an un- 
written life. 

Now the various species of whales need some sort of 
popular comprehensive classification, if only an easy outline 
one for the present, hereafter to be filled in all its depart- 
ments by subsequent labourers. As no better man advances 
to take this matter in hand, I hereupon offer my own poor 
endeavours. I promise nothing complete ; because any 
human thing supposed to be complete, must for that very 
reason infallibly be faulty. I shall not pretend to a minute 
anatomical description of the various species, or — in this 
place at least — to much of any description. My object here 
is simply to project the draught of a systematisation of 
cetology. I am the architect, not the builder. 

But it is a ponderous task ; no ordinary letter-sorter in 
the Post-office is equal to it. To grope down into the bot- 
tom of the sea after them ; to have one’s hands among the 
unspeakable foundations, ribs, and very pelvis of the world ; 
this is a fearful thing. What am I that I should essay to 
hook the nose of this leviathan ! The awful tauntings in 
Job might well appal me. “ Will he the (leviathan) make a 
covenant with thee? Behold the hope of him is vain!” 
But I have swam through libraries and sailed through 
oceans ; I have had to do with whales with these visible 
hands; I am in earnest; and I will try. There are some 
preliminaries to settle. 

First : The uncertain, unsettled condition of this science 
of Cetology is in the very vestibule attested by the fact, that 
in some quarters it still remains a moot point whether a 
whale be a fish. In his System of Nature, A. I). 1776, 
Linnaeus declares, “ I hereby separate the whales from the 
fish.” But of my own knowledge, I know that down to the 
year 1850, sharks and shads, ale wives and herring, against 


MOBY DICK. 


129 


Linnseus’s express edict, were still found dividing the posses- 
sion of the same seas with the Leviathan. 

The grounds upon which Linnaeus would fain have ban- 
ished the whales from the waters, he states as follows: 
“ On account of their warm bilocular heart, their lungs, 
their movable eyelids, their hollow ears, penem intrantem 
feminam mammis lactantem,” and finally, “ ex lege naturae 
jure meritoque.” I submitted all this to my friends Simeon 
Macey and Charley Coffin, of Nantucket, both messmates 
of mine in a certain voyage, and they united in the opinion 
that the reasons set forth were altogether insufficient. 
Charley profanely hinted they were humbug. 

Be it known that, waiving all argument, I take the good 
old-fashioned ground that the whale is a fish, and call upon 
holy Jonah to back me. This fundamental thing settled, 
the next point is, in what internal respect does the whale 
differ from other fish. Above, Linnaeus has given you those 
items. But in brief, they are these: lungs and warm 
blood ; whereas, all other fish are lungless and cold-blooded. 

Next: how shall we define the whale, by his obvious ex- 
ternals, so as conspicuously to label him for all time to 
come? To be short, then, a whale is a spouting fish with a 
horizontal tail. There you have him. However contracted, 
that definition is the result of expanded meditation. A 
walrus spouts much like a whale, but the walrus is not a 
fish, because he is amphibious. But the last term of the 
definition is still more cogent, as coupled with the first. 
Almost any one must have noticed that all the fish familiar 
to landsmen have not a flat, but a vertical, or up-and-down 
tail. Whereas, among spouting fish the tail, though it 
may be similarly shaped, invariably assumes a horizontal 
position. 

By the above definition of what a whale is, I do by no 
means exclude from the leviathanic brotherhood any sea 
creature hitherto identified with the whale by the best 
informed Nantucketers ; nor, on the other hand, link with 
it any fish hitherto authoritatively regarded as alien* 
Hence all the smaller, spouting, and horizontal tailed fish 

* I am aware that down to the present time, the fish styled Lama- 
tins and Dugongs (Pig-fish and Sow-fish of the Coffins of Nantucket) 
are included by many naturalists among the whales. But as these pig- 
fish are a noisy, contemptible set, mostly lurking in the mouths of rivers, 
and feeding on wet hay, and especially as they do not spout, I deny 
their credentials as whales; and have presented them with their pas- 
ports to quit the Kingdom of Cetology. 


130 


MOBY DICK. 


must be included in this ground-plan of Cetology. Now, 
then, come the grand divisions of the entire whale host. 

First: According to magnitude I divide the whales into 
three primary BOOKS (subdivisible into Chapters), and 
these shall comprehend them all, both small and large. 

I. The Folio Whale ; . II the Octavo Whale ; III. the 
Duodecimo Whale. 

As the type of the Folio I present the Sperm Whale ; of 
the Octavo, the Grampus ; of the Duodecimo, the Porpoise. 

FOLIOS. Among these I here include the following 
chapters : — I. The Sperm Whale / II. the Pight Whale / 
III. the Fin-Back Whale ; IV. the Hump-hacked Whale ; 
V. the Razor- Back Whale ; VI. the Sulphur-Bottom Whale. 

BOOK I. (Folio ), Chapter I. (Sperm Whale ). — This 
whale, among the English of old vaguely known as the 
Trumpa whale, and the Physeter . whale, and the Anvil- 
Headed whale, is the present Cachalot of the French and 
the Pottsfich of the Germans, and the Macrocephalus of 
the Long Words. He is, without doubt, the largest inhabit- 
ant of the globe ; the most formidable of all whales to encoun- 
ter ; the most majestic in aspect; and lastly, by far the most 
valuable in commerce ; he being the only creature from 
which that valuable substance, spermaceti, is obtained. 
All his peculiarities will, in many other places, be enlarged 
upon. It is chiefly with his name that I now have to do. 
Philologically considered, it is absurd. Some centuries ago, 
when the Sperm whale was almost wholly unknown in his 
own proper individuality, and when his oil was only ac- 
cidentally obtained from the stranded fish ; in those days 
spermaceti, it would seem, was popularly supposed to be 
derived from a creature identical with the one then known 
in England as the Greenland or Right Whale. It was the 
idea also that this same spermaceti was that quickening 
humour of the Greenland Whale which the first syllable 
of the word literally expresses. In those times, also, sper- 
maceti was exceedingly scarce, not being used for light, but 
only as an ointment and medicament. It was only to be 
had from the druggists as you nowadays buy an ounce of 
rhubarb. When, as I opine, in the course of time, the true 
nature of spermaceti became known, its original name was 
still retained by the dealers ; no doubt to enhance its value 
by a notion so strangely significant of its scarcity. And so 
the appellation must at last have come to be bestowed upon 
the whale fvom which this spermaceti was really derived. 


MOBY DICK. 


131 


BOOK I. (Folio), Chapter II. (Right Whale). — In one 
respect this is the most venerable of the leviathans, being 
the one first regularly hunted by man. It yields the article 
commonly known as whalebone or baleen ; and the oil spe- 
cially known as “whale oil,” an inferior article in com- 
merce. Among the fishermen, he is indiscriminately des- 
ignated by all the following titles : The Whale ; the Green- 
land Whale; the Black Whale; the Great Whale; The 
True Whale ; the Ri^ht-Wh'ale. There is a deal of obscurity 
concerning the Eternity of the species thus multitudinously 
baptised. Whjit then is the whale, which I include in the 
second species of my Folios ? It is the Great Mysticetus 
of the English naturalists ; the Greenland Whale of the Eng- 
lish whalemen ; the Baliene Ordinaire of the French whale- 
men; the Growlands Walfish of the Swedes. It is the 
whale which for more than two centuries past has been 
hunted by the Dutch and English in the Arctic seas ; it is the 
whale which the American fishermen have long pursued in 
the Indian ocean, on the Brazil Banks, on the Nor’ West 
Coast, and various other parts of the world, designated by 
them Right Whale Cruising Grounds. 

Some pretend to see a difference between the Greenland 
whale of the English and the right whale of the Americans. 
But they precisely agree in all their grand features ; nor 
has there yet been presented a single determinate fact upon 
which to ground a radical distinction. It is by endless sub- 
divisions based upon the most inconclusive differences, 
that some departments of natural history become so repel- 
lingly intricate,. The right whale will be elsewhere treated 
of at some length, with reference to elucidating the sperm 
whale. 

BOOK I. (Folio), Chapter III. (Fin-Back). — Under this 
head I reckon a monster which, by the various names of 
Fin-Back, Tail-Spout, and Long-John, has been seen almost 
in every sea and is commonly the whale whose distant jet is 
so often descried by passengers crossing the Atlantic, in the 
New York packet tracks. In the length he attains, and 
in his baleen, the Fin-back resembles the right whale, but 
is of a less portly girth, and a lighter colour, approaching 
to olive. His great lips present a cable-like aspect, formed 
by the intertwisting, slanting folds of large wrinkles. His 
grand distinguishing feature, the fin, from which he de- 
rives his name, is often a conspicuous object. This fin is 
some three or four feet long, growing vertically from the 


182 


MOBY DICK. 


hinder part of the back, of an angular shape, and with a 
very sharp pointed end. Even if not the slightest other 
part of the creature be visible, this isolated fin will, at 
times, be seen plainly projecting from the surface. When 
the sea is moderately calm, and slightly marked with 
spherical ripples, and this gnomon-like fin stands up and 
casts shadows upon the wrinkled surface, it may well be 
supposed that the watery circle surrounding it somewhat 
resembles a dial, with its style and wavy hour-lines graved 
on it. On that Ahaz-dial the shadow often goes back. 
The Fin-Back is not gregarious. He seems a whale-hater, 
as some men are man-haters. Very shy ; always going 
solitary ; unexpectedly rising to the surface in the remotest 
and most sullen waters ; his straight and single lofty jet ris- 
ing like a tall misanthropic spear upon a barren plain ; gifted 
with such wondrous power and velocity in swimming, as 
to defy all present pursuit from man ; this leviathan seems 
the banished and unconquerable Cain of his race, bearing 
for his mark that style upon his back. From having the 
baleen in his mouth, the Fin-Back is sometimes included 
with the right whale, among a theoretic species denominated 
Whalebone Whales , that is, whales with baleen. Of these 
so called Whalebone whales, there would seem to be sev- 
eral varieties, most of which, however, are little known. 
Broad-nosed whales and beaked whales ; pike-headed whales 
bunched whales ; under-jawed whales and rostrated whales, 
are the fishermen’s names for a few sorts. 

In connection with this appellative of “Whalebone 
whales,” it is of great importance to mention, that however 
such a nomenclature may be convenient in facilitating allu- 
sions to some kind of whales, yet it is in vain to attempt a 
clear classification of the leviathan, founded upon either 
his baleen, or hump, or fin or teeth ; notwithstanding that 
those marked parts or features very obviously seem better 
adapted to afford the basis for a regular system of Cetology 
than any other detached bodily distinctions, which the 
whale, in his kinds, presents. How then? The baleen, 
hump, back-fin and teeth ; these are things whose peculiar- 
ities are indiscriminately dispersed among all sorts of 
whales, without any regard to what may be the nature of 
their structure in other and more essential particulars. 
Thus, the sperm whale and the humpbacked whale, each 
has a hump ; but there the similitude ceases. Then, this 
same humpbacked whale and the Greenland whale, each of 


MOBY DICK. 


iaa 


these has baleen; but there again the similitude ceases. 
And it is just the same with the other parts above men- 
tioned. In various sorts of whales, they form such irreg- 
ular combinations ; or, in the case of any one of them de- 
tached, such an irregular isolation ; as utterly to defy all 
general methodisation formed upon such a basis. On this 
rock every one of the whale-naturalists has split. 

But it may possibly be conceived that, in the internal 
parts of the whale, in his anatomy — there, at least, we shall 
be able to hit the right classification. Nay ; what thing, 
for example, is there in the Greenland whale’s anatomy 
more striking than his baleen ? Yet we have seen that by 
his baleen it is impossible correctly to classify the Green- 
land whale. And if you descend into the bowels of the 
various leviathans, why there you will not find distinctions 
a fiftieth part as available to the systematiser as those ex- 
ternal ones already enumerated. What then remains? 
nothing but to take hold of the whales bodily, in their en- 
tire liberal volume, and boldly sort them that way. And 
this is the Bibliographical system here adopted ; and it is 
the only one that can possibly succeed, for it alone is prac- 
ticable. To proceed. 

BOOK I. (Polio), Chapter IY. (Hump- Back). — This whale 
is often seen on the northern American coast. He has been 
frequently captured there, and towed into harbour. He has 
a great pack on him like a pedlar ; or you might call him 
the Elephant and Castle whale. At any rate, the popular 
name for him does not sufficiently distinguish him, since 
the sperm whale also has a hump, though a smaller one. 
His oil is not very valuable. He has baleen. He is the most 
gamesome and light-hearted of all the whales, making more 
gay foam and white water generally than any other of 
them. 

BOOK I. (Folio), Chapter Y. (Razor-Back). — Of this 
whale little is known but his name. I have seen him at a 
distance off Cape Horn. Of a retiring nature, he eludes both 
hunters and philosophers. Though no coward, he has 
never yet shown any part of him but his back, which rises 
in a long sharp ridge. Let him go. I know little more of 
him, nor does anybody else. 

BOOK I. (Folio), Chapter YI. (Sulphur- Bottom). — An- 
other retiring gentleman, with a brimstone belly, doubtless 
got by scraping along the Tartarian tiles in some of his pro- 
founder divings. He is seldom seen ; at least I have never 


134 


MOBY DICK. 


seen him except in the remoter southern seas, and then 
always at too great a distance to study his countenance. 
He is never chased ; he would run away with rope-walks 
of line. Prodigies are told of him. Adieu, Sulphur-Bottom! 
I can say nothing more that is true of ye, nor can the oldest 
Nantucketer. 

Thus ends BOOK I. (Folio), and now begins BOOK IE. 
(Octavo). 

OCTAVOES.* These embrace the whales of middling 
magnitude, among which at present may be numbered : — I., 
the Grampus / II., the Flack Fish / III., the Narwhal / 
IV., the Thrasher ; V., the Killer. 

BOOK II. (Octavo), Chapter I. (Grampus). — Though this 
fish, whose loud sonorous breathing, or rather blowing, has 
furnished a proverb to landsmen, is so well known a denizen 
of the deep, yet is he not popularly classed among whales. 
But possessing all the grand distinctive features of the 
leviathan, most naturalists have recognised him for one. 
He is of moderate octavo size, varying from fifteen to 
twenty -five feet in length, and of corresponding dimensions 
round the waist. He swims in herds ; he is never regularly 
hunted, though his oil is considerable in quantity, and pretty 
good for light. By some fishermen his approach is regarded 
as premonitory of the advance of the great sperm whale. 

BOOK II. (Octavo), Chapter II. ( Black Fish). — I give 
the popular fishermen’s names for all these fish, for generally 
they are the best. Where any name happens to be vague 
or inexpressive, I shall say so, and suggest another. I do 
so now, touching the Black Fish, so-called, because black- 
ness is the rule among almost all whales. So, call him the 
Hyena Whale, if you please. His voracity is well known, 
and from the circumstances that the inner angles of his lips 
are curved upwards, he carries an everlasting Mephisto- 
phelian grin on his face. This whale averages some sixteen 
or eighteen feet in length. He is found in almost all lat- 
itudes. He has a peculiar way of showing his dorsal hooked 
fin in swimming, which looks something like a Roman nose. 
When not more profitably employed, the sperm whale 
hunters sometimes capture the Hyena whale, to keep up the 

* Why this book of whales is not denominated the Quarto is very plain. 
Because, while the whales of this order, though smaller than those of 
the former order, nevertheless retain a proportionate likeness to them in 
figure, yet the bookbinder’s Quarto volume In its diminished form does 
not preserve the shape of the Folio volume, but the Octavo volume does 


MOBY DICK. 


135 

supply of cheap oil for domestic employment — as some 
frugal housekeepers, in the absence of company, and quite 
alone by themselves, burn unsavoury tallow instead of odour- 
ous wax. Though their blubber is very thin, some of these 
whales will yield you upwards of thirty gallons of oil. 

BOOK II. ( Octavo ), Chapter III. (Narwhal), that is, 
Nostril whale . — Another instance of a curiously named 
whale, so named I suppose from his peculiar horn being 
originally mistaken for a peaked nose. The creature is 
some sixteen feet in length, while its horn averages five 
feet, though some exceed ten, and even attain to fifteen feet. 
Strictly speaking, this horn is but a lengthened tusk, grow- 
ing out from the jaw in a line a little depressed from the 
horizontal. But it is only found on the sinister side, which 
has an ill effect, giving its owner something analogous to 
the aspect of a clumsy left-handed man. What precise 
purpose this ivory horn or lance answers, it would be hard 
to say. It does not seem to be used like the blade of the 
sword-fish and hill-fish ; though some sailors tell me that 
the Narwhal employs it for a rake in turning over the 
bottom of the sea for food. Charley Coffin said it was used 
for an ice-piercer ; for the Narwhal, rising to the surface 
of the Polar Sea, and finding it sheeted with ice, thrusts 
his horn up, and so breaks through. But you cannot 
prove either of these surmises to be correct. My own 
opinion is, that however this one-sided horn may really be 
used by the Narwhal — however that may he — it would 
certainly be very convenient to him for a folder in reading 
pamphlets. The Narwhal I have heard called the Tusked 
whale, the Horned whale, and the Unicorn whale. lie is 
certainly a curious example of the Unicornism to he found 
in almost every kingdom of animated nature. From certain 
cloistered old authors I have gathered that this same sea- 
unicorn’s horn was in ancient days regarded as the great 
antidote against poison, and as such, preparations of it 
brought immense prices. It was also distilled to a volatile 
salts for fainting ladies, the same way that the horns of 
the male deer are manufactured into hartshorn. Originally 
it was in itself accounted an object of great curiosity. 
Black Letter tells me that Sir Martin Frobisher on his re- 
turn from that voyage, when Queen Bess did gallantly 
wave her jewelled hand to him from a window of Green- 
wich Palace, as his hold ship sailed down the Thames; 
“ when Sir Martin returned from that voyage,” saith Black 


MOBY DICK. 


136 


Letter, “ on bended knees he presented to her highness a 
prodigious long horn of the Narwhal, which for a long 
period after hung in the castle at Windsor.” An Irish 
author avers that the Earl of Leicester, on bended knees, 
did likewise present to her highness another horn, pertain- 
ing to a land beast of the unicorn nature. 

The Narwhal has a very picturesque, leopard-like look, 
being of a milk-white ground colour, dotted with round and 
oblong spots of black. Ilis oil is very superior, clear and 
fine ; but there is little of it, and he is seldom hunted. He 
is mostly found in the circumpolar seas. 

BOOK II. (Octavo), Chapter IV. (Killer). — Of this whale 
little is precisely known to the Nantucketer, and nothing 
at all to the professed naturalist. From what I have seen 
of him at a distance, I should say that he was about the 
bigness of a grampus. He is very savage — a sort of Feejee 
fish. He sometimes takes the great Folio whales by the 
lip, and hangs there like a leech, till the mighty brute is 
worried to death. The Killer is never hunted. I never 
heard what sort of oil he has. Exceptions might be taken 
to the name bestowed upon this whale, on the ground of 
its indistinctness. For we are all killers, on land and on 
sea ; Bonapartes and Sharks included. 

BOOK If. ( Octavo ), Chapter V. ( Thrasher). — This gentle- 
man is famous for his tail, which he uses for a ferule in 
thrashing his foes. He mounts the Folio whale’s back, and 
as he swims, he works his passage by flogging him ; as 
some schoolmasters get along in the world by a similar 
process. Still less is known of the Thrasher than of the 
Killer. Both are outlaws, even in the lawless seas. 

Thus ends BOOK II. ( Octavo ), and begins BOOK III. 
(Duodecimo). 

DUODECIMOES. — These include the smaller whales. I. 
The Huzza Porpoise. II. The Algerine Porpoise. III. The 
Mealy-mouthed Porpoise. 

To those who have not chanced specially to study the 
subject, it may possibly seem strange, that fishes not com- 
monly exceeding four or five feet should be marshalled 
among WHALES— a word, which, in the popular sense, 
always conveys an idea of hugeness. But the creatures 
set down above as DuodecimoeS are infallibly whales, by the 
terms of my definition of what a whale is — i.e ., a spouting 
fish, with a horizontal tail. 

BOOK III. ( Duodecimo ), Chapter I. (Huzza Porpoise . — 


MOBY DICK. 


137 


This is the common porpoise found almost all over the 
globe. The name is of my own bestowal ; for there are 
more than one sort of porpoises, and something must be 
done to distinguish them. I call him thus, because he al- 
ways swims in hilarious shoals, which upon the broad sea 
keep tossing themselves to heaven like caps in a Fourth of 
J uly crowed. Their appearance is generally hailed with de- 
light by the mariner. Full of fine spirits, they invariably 
come from the breezy billows to windward. They are the 
lads that always live before the wind. They are accounted 
a lucky omen. If you yourself can withstand three cheers 
at beholding these vivacious fish, then heaven help ye ; the 
spirit of godly gamesomeness is not in ye. A well-fed, 
plump Huzza Porpoise will yield you one good gallon of 
good oil. But the fine and delicate fluid extracted from his 
jaws is exceedingly valuable. It is in request among 
jewellers and watchmakers. Sailors put it on their hones. 
Porpoise meat is good eating, you know. It may never 
have occurred to you that a porpoise spouts. Indeed, his 
spout is so small that it is not very readily discernible. 
But the next time you have a chance, watch him ; and you 
will then see the great Sperm whale himself in miniature. 

BOOK III. (Duodecimo), Chapter II. ( Algerine Porpoise). 
— A pirate. Very savage. He is only found, I think, in the 
Pacific. He is somewhat larger than the Huzza Porpoise, 
but much of the same general make. Provoke him, and he 
will buckle to a shark. I have lowered for him many times, 
but never yet saw him captured. 

BOOK III. (Duodecimo), Chapter III. (Mealy-mouthed 
Porpoise ). — The largest kind of Porpoise ; and only found 
in the Pacific, so far as it is known. The only English 
name, by which he has hitherto been designated, is that of 
the fishers — Right- Whale Porpoise, from the circumstance 
that he is chiefly found in the vicinity of that Folio. In 
shape, he differs in some degree from the Huzza Porpoise, 
being of a less rotund and jolly girth ; indeed, h-e is quite a 
neat and gentlemanlike figure. He has no fins on his back 
(most other porpoises have), he has a lovely tail, and sen- 
timental Indian eyes of a hazel hue. But his mealy-mouth 
spoils all. Though his entire back down to his side fins is 
of a deep sable, yet a boundary line, distinct as the mark in 
a ship’s hull, called the “ bright waist,” that line streaks 
him from stem to stern, with two separate colours, black 
above and white below. The white comprises part of his 


MOBY DICK. 


138 

head, and the whole of his mouth, which makes him look 
as if he had just escaped from a felonious visit to a meal- 
bag. A most mean and mealy aspect ! Ilis oil is much 
like that of the common porpoise. 

****** 

Beyond the Duodecimo, this system does not proceed, 
inasmuch as the Porpoise is the smallest of the whales. 
Above, you have all the leviathans of note. But there are 
a rabble of uncertain, fugitive, half-fabulous whales, which, 
as an American whaleman, I know by reputation, but not 
personally. I shall enumerate them by their forecastle ap- 
pellations ; for possibly such a list may be valuable to 
future investigators, who may complete what I have here 
but begun. If any of the following whales, shall hereafter 
be caught and marked, then he can readily be incorporated 
into this system, according to his Folio, Octavo, or Duode- 
cimo magnitude : — The Bottle-Nose Whale ; the Junk 
Whale ; the Pudding-Headed Whale ; the Cape Whale ; 
the Leading Whale; the Cannon Whale; the Scragg 
Whale ; the Coppered Whale ; the Elephant Whale ; the 
Iceberg Whale ; the Quog Whale ; the Blue Whale ; etc. 
From Icelandic, Dutch, and old English authorities, there 
might be quoted other lists of uncertain whales, blessed 
with all manner of uncouth names. But I omit them as 
altogether obsolete ; and can hardly help suspecting them 
for mere sounds, full of Leviathanism, but signifying noth- 
ing. 

Finally. It was stated at the outset, that this system 
would not be here, and at once, perfected. You cannot but 
plainly see that I have kept my word. But I now leave 
my cetological system standing thus unfinished, even as 
the great Cathedral of Cologne was left, with the crane still 
standing upon the top of the uncompleted tower. For 
small erections may be finished by their first architects ; 
grand ones, true ones, ever leave the copestone to posterity. 
God keep me from ever completing anything. This whole 
book is but draught— nay, but the draught of a draught. 
Oh, Time, Strength, Cash, and Patience ! 


MOBY DICK. 


139 


CHAPTER XXXIII. 

THE SPECKSYNDER. 

Concerning the officers of the whale-craft, this seems as 
good a place as any to set down a little domestic peculiarity 
on shipboard, arising from the existence of the harpooner 
class of officers, a class unknown of course in any other 
marine than the whale-fleet. 

The large importance attached to the harpooner’s voca- 
tion is evinced by the fact, that originally in the old Dutch 
Fishery, two centuries and more ago, the command of a 
whale ship was not wholly lodged in the person now 
called the captain, hut was divided between him and an 
officer called the Specksynder. Literally this word means 
Fat- Cutter ; usage, however, in time made it equivalent to 
Chief Harpooner. In those days, the captain’s authority 
was restricted to the navigation and general management 
of the vessel; while over the whale-hunting department 
and all its concerns, the Specksynder or Chief Harpooner 
reigned supreme. In the British Greenland Fishery, under 
the corrupted title of Specksioneer, this old Dutch official is 
still retained, but his former dignity is sadly abridged. At 
present he ranks simply as senior Harpooner ; and as such, is 
one of the Captain’s more inferior subalterns. Nevertheless 
as upon the good conduct of the harpooners the success of a 
whaling voyage largely depends, and since in the American 
Fishery he is not only an important officer in the boat, but 
under certain circumstances (night watches on a whaling 
ground) the command of the ship’s deck is also his ; there- 
fore the grand political maxim of the sea demands, that he 
should nominally live apart from the men before the mast, 
and be in some way distinguished as their professional 
superior ; though always, by them, familiarly regarded as 
their social equal. 

Now, the grand distinction drawn between officer and 
man at sea, is this— the first lives aft, the last forward. 
Hence, in whale-ships and merchantmen alike, the mates 
have their quarters with the captain ; and so, too, in most 


140 


MOBY DICK. 


of the American whalers the harpooners are lodged in the 
after part of the ship. That is to say, they take their meals 
in the captain’s cabin, and sleep in a place indirectly com- 
municating with it. 

Though the long period of a Southern whaling voyage 
(by far the longest of all voyages now or ever made by 
man), the peculiar perils of it, and the community of inter- 
est prevailing among a company, all of whom, high or low, 
depend for their profits, not upon fixed wages, but upon 
their common luck, together with their common vigilance, 
intrepidity, and hard work ; though all these things do in 
some cases tend to beget a less rigorous discipline than in 
merchantmen generally ; yet, never mind how much like 
an old Mesopotamian family these whalemen may, in some 
primitive instances, live together ; for all that, the punc- 
tilious externals, at least, of the quarter-deck are seldom 
materially relaxed, and in no instance done away. Indeed, 
many are the Nantucket ships in which you will see the 
skipper parading his quarter-deck with an elated grandeur 
not surpassed in any military navy ; nay, extorting almost 
as much outward homage as if he wore the imperial pur- 
ple, and not the shabbiest of pilot-cloth. 

And though of all men the moody captain of the Pequod 
was the least given to that sort of shallowest assumption ; 
and though the only homage he ever exacted, was implicit, 
instantaneous obedience; though he required no man to 
remove the shoes from his feet ere stepping upon the 
quarter-deck ; and though there were times when, owing 
to peculiar circumstances connected with events hereafter 
to be detailed, he addressed them in unusual terms, whether 
of condescension or in terrorem , or otherwise ; yet even 
Captain Ahab was by no means unobservant of the para- 
mount forms and usages of the sea. 

Nor, perhaps, will it fail to be eventually perceived, that 
behind those forms and usages, as it were, he sometimes 
masked himself ; incidentally making use of them for other 
and more private ends than they were legitimately intended 
to subserve. That certain sultanism of his brain, which 
had otherwise in a good degree remained unmanifested; 
through those forms that same sultanism became incarnate 
in an irresistible dictatorship. For be a man’s intellectual 
superiority what it will, it can never assume the practical, 
available supremacy over other men, without the aid of some 
sort of external arts and entrenchments, always, in them- 


MOBY DICK. 


141 


selves, more or less paltry and base. This it is, that for- 
ever keeps God’s true princes of the Empire from the 
world’s hustings ; and leaves the highest honours that this 
air can give, to those men who become famous more 
through their infinite inferiority to the choice hidden hand- 
ful of the Divine Inert, than through their undoubted 
superiority over the dead level of the mass. Such large 
virtue lurks in these small things when extreme political 
superstitions invest them, that in some royal instances 
even to idiot imbecility they have imparted potency. But 
when, as in the case of Nicholas the Czar, the ringed crown 
of geographical empire encircles an imperial brain ; then, 
the plebeian herds crouch abased before the tremendous 
centralization. Nor, will the tragic dramatist who would 
depict mortal indomitableness in its fullest sweep and 
direct swing, ever forget a hint, incidentally so important 
in his art, as the one now alluded to. 

But Ahab, my captain, still moves before me in all his 
Nantucket grimness and shagginess; and in this episode 
touching emperors and kings, I must not conceal that I 
have only to do with a poor old whale-liunter like him ; 
and, therefore, all outward majestical trappings and hous- 
ings are denied me. Oh, Ahab, what shall be grand in 
thee, it must needs be plucked at from the skies, and dived 
for in the deep, and featured in the unbodied air ! 


CHAPTER XXXIV. 

THE CABIX-TABLE. 

It is noon ; and Dough-Boy, the steward, thrusting his 
pale loaf-of-bread face from the cabin-scuttle, announces 
dinner to his lord and master; who, sitting in the lee 
quarter-boat, has just been taking an observation of the 
sun; and is now mutely reckoning the latitude on the 
smooth, medallion-shaped tablet, reserved for that daily 
purpose on the upper part of his ivory leg. From his com- 
plete inattention to the tidings, you would think that 
moody Ahab had not heard his menial. But presently, 
catching hold of the mizzen shrouds, lie swings himself to 


142 


MOBY DICK. 


the deck, and in an even, unexliilarated voice, saying, Din- 
ner, Mr. Starbuck,” disappears into the cabin. 

When the last echo of his sultan’s step has died away, 
and Starbuck, the first Emir, has every reason to suppose 
that he is seated, then Starbuck rouses from his quietude, 
takes a few turns along the planks, and, after a grave peep 
into the binnacle, says, with some touch of pleasantness, 
“ Dinner, Mr. Stubb,” and descends the scuttle. The second 
Emir lounges about the rigging awhile, and then slightly 
shaking the main brace, to see whether it be all right with 
that important rope, he likewise takes up the old burden, 
and with a rapid “ Dinner, Mr. Flask,” follows after his 
predecessors. 

But the third Emir, now seeing himself all alone on the 
quarter-deck, seems to feel relieved from some curious re- 
straint ; for, tipping all sorts of knowing winks’in all sort of 
directions, and kicking off his shoes, he strikes into a sharp 
but noiseless squall of a hornpipe right over the Grand Turk’s 
head ; and then, by a dexterous sleight, pitching his cap 
up into the mizzen-top for a shelf, he goes down rollicking, 
so far at least as he remains visible from the deck, reversing 
all other processions, by bringing up the rear with music. 
But ere stepping into the cabin doorway below, he pauses, 
ships a new face altogether, and, then, independent, hilari- 
ous little Flask enters King Ahab’s presence, in the char- 
acter of Abjectus, or the Slave. 

It is not the least among the strange things bred by the 
intense artificialness of sea-usages, that while in the open 
air of the deck some officers will, upon provocation, bear 
themselves boldly and defyingly enough towards their com- 
mander ; yet, ten to one, let those very officers the next 
moment go down to their customary dinner in that same 
commander’s cabin, and straightway their inoffensive, not 
to say deprecatory and humble air towards him, as he sits 
at the head of the table ; this is marvellous, sometimes 
most comical. Wherefore this difference? A problem? 
Perhaps not. To have been Belshazzar, King of Babylon ; 
and to have been Belshazzar, not haughtily but courteously, 
therein certainly must have been some touch of mundane 
grandeur. But he who in the rightlv regal and intelligent 
spirit presides over his own private dinner-table of invited 
guests, that man’s unchallenged power and dominion of in- 
dividual influence for the time ; that man’s royalty of state 
transcends Belshazzar’s for Belshazzar was not the greatest. 


MOBY DICK. 


143 


Who has hut once dined his friends, has tasted what it is to 
he Caesar. It is a witchery of social czarship which there is 
no withstanding. Now, if to this consideration you superadd 
the official supremacy of a ship-master, then, by inference, 
you will derive the cause of that peculiarity of sea-life just 
mentioned. 

Over his ivory-inlaid table, Ahab presided like a mute, 
maned sea-lion on the white coral beach, surrounded by his 
warlike but still deferential cubs. In his own proper turn, 
each officer waited to be served. They were as little 
children before Ahab ; and yet, in Ahab, there seemed not 
to lurk the smallest social arrogance. With one mind, 
their intent eyes all fastened upon the old man’s knife, 
as he carved the chief dish before him, I do not sup- 
pose that for the world they would have profaned that 
moment with the slightest observation, even upon so 
neutral a topic as the weather. No ! And when reaching 
out his knife and fork, between which the slice of beef was 
locked, Ahab thereby motioned Starbuck’s plate towards 
him, the mate received his meat as though receiving alms ; 
and cut it tenderly ; and a little startled if, perchance, the 
knife grazed against the plate ; and chewed it noiselessly ; and 
swallowed it, not without circumspection. For, like the 
Coronation banquet at Frankfort, where the German Em- 
peror profoundly dines with the seven Imperial Electors, so 
these cabin meals were somehow solemn meals, eaten in 
awful silence ; and yet at table old Ahab forbade not con- 
versation; only he himself was dumb. What a relief it 
was to choking Stubb, when a rat made a sudden racket 
in the hold below. And poor little Flask, he was the 
youngest son, and little boy of this weary family party. His 
were the shinbones of the saline beef ; his would have been 
the drumsticks. For Flask to have presumed to help him- 
self, this must have seemed to him tantamount to larceny in 
the first degree. Had he helped himself at that table, doubt- 
less, never more would he have been able to hold his head 
up in this honest world ; nevertheless, strange to say, Ahab 
never forbade him. And had Flask helped himself, the 
chances were Ahab had never so much as noticed it. Least 
of all, did Flask presume to help himself to butter. Whether 
he thought the owners of the ship denied it to him, on 
account of its clotting his clear, sunny complexion; or 
whether he deemed that, on so long a voyage in such 
marketless waters, butter was at a premium, and therefore 


144 


MOBY DICK. 


was not for him, a subaltern ; however it was, Flask, alas ! 
was a butterless man ! 

Another thing. Flask was the last person down at the 
dinner, and Flask is the first man up. Consider ! For 
hereby Flask’s dinner was badly jammed in point of time. 
Starbuck and Stubb both had the start of him ; and yet 
they also have the privilege of lounging in the rear. If 
Stubb even, who is but a peg higher than Flask, happens to 
have but a small appetite, and soon shows symptoms 
of concluding his repast, then Flask must bestir himself, 
he will not get more than three mouthfuls that day ; for it 
is against holy usage for Stubb to precede Flask to the deck. 
Therefore it was that Flask once admitted in private, that 
ever since he had arisen to the dignity of an officer, from 
that moment he had never known what it was to be other- 
wise than hungry, more or less. For what he ate did not so 
much relieve his hunger, as keep it immortal in him. Peace 
and satisfaction, thought Flask, have forever departed 
from my stomach. I am an officer ; but, how I wish I 
could fish a bit of old-fashioned beef in the forecastle, as I 
used to when I was before the mast. There’s the fruits of 
promotion now ; there’s the vanity of glory ; there’s the 
insanity of life ! Besides, if it were so that any mere 
sailor of the Pequod had a grudge against Flask in 
Flask’s official capacity, all that sailor had to do, in order 
to obtain ample vengeance, was to go aft at dinner-time, 
and get a peep at Flask through the cabin skylight, sitting 
silly and dumfoundered before awful Ahab. 

Now, Ahab and his three mates formed what may be 
called the first table in the Pequod’s cabin. After their 
departure, taking place in inverted order to their arrival, 
the canvas cloth was cleared, or rather was restored to 
some hurried order by the pallid steward. And then the 
three harpooners were bidden to the feast, they being 
its residuary legatees. They made a sort of temporary 
servants’ hall of the high and mighty cabin. 

In strange contrast to the hardly tolerable constraint 
and nameless invisible domineerings of the captain’s table, 
was the entire care-free license and ease, the almost frantic 
democracy of those inferior fellows the harpooners. 
While their masters, the mates, seemed afraid of the sound 
of the hinges of their own jaws, the harpooners chewed 
their food with such a relish that there was a report to it. 
They dined like lords ; they filled their bellies like Indian 


MOBY DICK. 


145 


ships all day loading with spices. Such portentous 
appetites had Queequeg and Tashtego, that to fill out the 
vacancies made by the previous repast, often the pale 
Dough-Boy was fain to bring on a great baron of salt- junk, 
seemingly quarried out of the solid ox. And if he were 
not lively about it, if he did not go with a nimble hop- 
skip-and-jump, then Tashtego had an ungentlemanly way 
of accelerating him by darting a fork at his back, harpoon- 
wise. And once Daggoo, seized with a sudden humour, 
assisted Dough-Boy’s memory by snatching him up bodily, 
and thrusting his head into a great empty wooden trencher, 
while Tashtego, knife in hand, began laying out the circle 
preliminary to scalping him. He was naturally a very 
nervous, shuddering sort of little fellow, this bread-faced 
steward ; the progeny of a bankrupt baker and a hospital 
nurse. And what with the standing spectacle of the black 
terrific Ahab, and the periodical tumultuous visitations 
of these three savages, Dough-Boy’s whole life was one con- 
tinual lip-quiver. Commonly, after seeing the harpooners 
furnished with all things they demanded, he would escape 
from their clutches into his little pantry adjoining, and 
fearfully peep out at them through the blinds of its door, 
till all was over. 

It was a sight to see Queequeg seated over against Tash- 
tego, opposing his filed teeth to the Indian’s : crosswise to 
them, Daggoo seated on the floor, for a bench would have 
brought his hearse-plumed head to the low carlines; at 
every motion of his colossal limbs, making the low cabin 
framework to shake, as when an African elephant goes 
passenger in a ship. But for all this, the great negro was 
wonderfully abstemious, not to say dainty. It seemed 
hardly possible that by such comparatively small mouth- 
fuls he could keep up the vitality diffused through so 
broad, baronial, and superb a person. But, doubtless, this 
noble savage fed strong and drank deep of the abounding 
element of air ; and through his dilated nostrils snuffed in 
the sublime life of the worlds. Not by beef or by bread, 
are giants made or nourished. But Queequeg, he had a 
mortal, barbaric smack of the lip in eating— an ugly sound 
enough— so much so, that the trembling Dough-Boy almost 
looked to see whether any marks of teeth lurked in his own 
lean arms. And when he would hear Tashtego singing out 
for him to produce himself, that his bones might be picked, 
the simple- witted steward all but shattered the crockery 


146 


MOBY DICK. 


hanging around him in the pantry, by his sudden fits of the 
palsy. Nor did the whetstone which the harpooners car- 
ried in their pockets, for their lances and other weapons ; 
and with which whetstones, at dinner, they would ostenta- 
tiously sharpen their knives ; that grating sound did not at 
all tend to tranquillise poor Dough-Boy. How could he 
forget that in his Island days, Queequeg, for one, must cer- 
tainly have been guilty of some murderous, convivial indis- 
cretions. Alas ! Dough-Boy ! hard fares the white waiter 
who waits upon cannibals. Not a napkin should he carry 
on his arm, hut a buckler. In good time, though, to his 
great delight, the three salt-sea warriors would rise and 
depart; to his credulous, fable-mongering ears, all their 
martial bones jingling in them at every step, like Moorish 
scimetars in scabbards. 

But, though these barbarians dined in the cabin, and nom- 
inally lived there ; still, being anything but sedentary in 
their habits, they were scarcely ever in it except at meal- 
times, and just before sleeping-time, when they passed 
through it to their own peculiar quarters. 

In this one matter, Ahab seemed no exception to most 
American whale captains, who, as a set, rather incline to 
the opinion that by rights the ship’s cabin belongs to them ; 
and that it is by courtesy alone that anybody else is, at any 
time, permitted there. So that, in real truth, the mates and 
harpooners of the Pequod might more properly be said to 
have lived out of the cabin than in it. For when they did 
enter it, it was something as a street-door enters a house ; 
turning inwards for a moment, only to be turned out the 
next ; and, as a permanent thing, residing in the open air. 
Nor did they lose much hereby ; in the cabin was no com- 
panionship ; socially, Ahab was inaccessible. Though nom- 
inally included in the census of Christendom, he was still 
an alien to it. He lived in the world, as the last of the 
Grisly Bears lived in settled Missouri. And as when 
Spring and Summer had departed, that wild Logan of the 
woods, burying himself in the hollow of a tree, lived out 
the winter there, sucking his own paws ; so, in his inclem- 
ent, howling old age, Ahab’s soul, shut up in the caved 
trunk of his body, there fed upon the sullen paws of its 
gloom ! 


MOBY DICK. 


147 


CHAPTER XXXV. 

THE MAST-HEAD. 

It was during the more pleasant weather, that in due 
rotation with the other seamen my first mast-head came 
round. 

In most American whalemen the mast-heads are manned 
almost simultaneously with the vessel’s leaving her port ; 
even though she may have fifteen thousand miles, and 
more, to sail ere reaching her proper cruising ground. 
And if, after a three, four, or five years’ voyage she is draw- 
ing nigh home with anything empty in her — say, an empty 
vial even — then, her mast-heads are kept manned to the 
last ; and not till her skysail-poles sail in among the spires of 
the port, does she altogether relinquish the hope of capturing 
one whale more. 

Now, as the business of standing mast-heads, ashore or 
afloat, is a very ancient and interesting one, let us in some 
measure expatiate here. I take it, that the earliest standers 
of mast-heads were the old Egyptians ; because, in all my 
researches, I find none prior to them. For though their 
progenitors, the builders of Babel, must doubtless, by their 
tower, have intended to rear the loftiest mast-head in all 
Asia, or Africa either ; yet (ere the final truck was put to it) 
as that great stone mast of theirs may be said to have gone 
by the board, in the dread gale of God’s wrath ; therefore, 
we cannot give these Babel builders priority over the Egyp- 
tians. And that the Egyptians were a nation of mast-head 
standers, is an assertion based upon the general belief 
among archaeologists, that the first pyramids were founded 
for astronomical purposes : a theory singularly supported by 
the peculiar stair-like formation of all four sides of those 
edifices ; whereby, with prodigious long upliftings of their 
legs, those old astronomers were wont to mount to the apex, 
and sing out for new stars ; even as the look-outs of a mod- 
ern ship sing out for a sail, or a whale just bearing in sight. 
In Saint Stylites, the famous Christian hermit of old times, 
who built him a lofty stone pillar in the desert and spent 


148 


MOBY DICK. 


the whole latter portion of his life on its summit, hoisting 
his food from the ground with a tackle ; in him we have a 
remarkable instance of a dauntless stander-of-mast-heads ; 
who was not to be driven from his place by fogs or frosts, 
rain, hail, or sleet ; but valiantly facing everything out to 
the last, literally died at his post. Of modern standers-of- 
mast-heads we have but a lifeless set ; mere stone, iron, and 
bronze men ; who, though well capable of facing out a stiff 
gale, are still entirely incompetent to the business of sing- 
ing out upon discovering any strange sight. There is Napo- 
leon ; who, upon the top of the column of Vendome, stands 
with arms folded, some one hundred and fifty feet in the air ; 
careless, now, who rules the decks below ; whether Louis Phil- 
ippe, Louis Blanc, or Louis the Devil. Great Washington, 
too, stands high aloft on his towering main-mast in Balti- 
more, and like one of Hercules’ pillars, his column marks 
that point of human grandeur beyond which few mortals will 
go. Admiral Nelson, also, on a capstan of gun-metal, stands 
his mast-head in Trafalgar Square ; and ever when most ob- 
scured by that London smoke, token is yet given that a 
hidden hero is there ; for where there is smoke, must be 
fire. But neither great Washington, nor Napoleon, nor 
Nelson, will answer a single hail from below, however madly 
invoked to befriend by their counsels the distracted decks 
upon which they gaze ; however, it may be surmised, that 
their spirits penetrate through the thick haze of the future 
and descry what shoals and what rocks must be shunned. 

It may seem unwarrantable to couple in any respect the 
mast-head standers of the land with those of the sea ; but 
that in truth it is not so, is plainly evinced by an item for 
which Obed Macy, the sole historian of Nantucket, stands 
accountable. The worthy Obed tells us, that in the early 
times of the whale fishery, ere ships were regularly launched 
in pursuit of the game, the people of that island erected 
lofty spars along the sea-coast, to which the look-outs 
ascended by means of nailed cleats, something as fowls go 
upstairs in a hen-house. A few years ago this same plan 
was adopted by the Bay whalemen of New Zealand, who, 
upon descrying the game, gave notice to the ready-manned 
boats nigh the beach. But this custom has now become, 
obsolete ; turn we then to the one proper mast-head, that of 
a whale-ship at sea. The three mast-heads are kept manned 
from sunrise to sunset ; the seamen taking their regular 
turns (as at the helm), and relieving each other every two 


MOBY DICK. 


149 


hours. In the serene weather of the tropics it is exceeding- 
ly pleasant the mast-head ; nay, to a dreamy meditative man 
it is delightful. There you stand, a hundred feet above the 
silent decks, striding along the deep, as if the masts were 
gigantic stilts, while beneath you and between your legs, as 
it were, swim the hugest monsters of the sea, even as ships 
once sailed between the boots of the famous Colossus at old 
Rhodes. There you stand, lost in the infinite series of the 
sea, with nothing ruffled but the waves. The tranced ship 
indolently rolls ; the drowsy trade winds blow ; everything 
resolves you into languor. For the most part, in this tropic 
whaling life, a sublime uneventfulness invests you; you 
hear no news ; read no gazettes ; extras with startling ac- 
counts of commonplaces never delude you into unnecessary 
excitements ; you hear of no domestic afflictions ; bankrupt 
securities ; fall of stocks ; are never troubled with the 
thought of what you shall have for dinner — for all your 
meals for three years and more are snugly stowed in casks, 
and your bill of fare is immutable. 

In one of those southern whalemen, on a long three or 
four years’ voyage, as often happens, the sum of the various 
hours you spend at the mast-head would amount to several 
entire months. And it is much to be deplored that the 
place to which you devote so considerable a portion of the 
whole term of your natural life, should be so sadly destitute 
of anything approaching to a cosy inhabitiveness, or adapted 
to breed a comfortable localness of feeling, such as pertains 
to a bed, a hammock, a hearse, a sentry box, a pulpit, a 
coach, or any other of those small and snug contrivances in 
which men temporarily isolate themselves. Your most 
usual point of perch is the head of the t’ gallant-mast, 
where you stand upon two thin parallel sticks (almost 
peculiar to whalemen) called the t’-gallant cross-trees. 
Here, tossed about by the sea, the beginner feels about as 
cosy as he would standing on a bull’s horns. To be sure, 
in cold weather you may carry your house aloft with you, 
in the shape of a watch-coat ; but properly speaking the 
thickest watch-coat is no more of a house than the unclad 
body ; for as the soul is glued inside of its fleshly tabernacle, 
and cannot freely move about in it, nor even move out of 
it, without running great risk of perishing (like an ignorant 
pilgrim crossing the snowy Alps in winter) ; so a watch- 
coat is not so much of a house as it is a mere envelope, or 
additional skin encasing you. You cannot put a shelf or 


150 


MOBY DICK. 


chest of drawers in your body, and no more can you make 
a convenient closet of your watch-coat. 

Concerning all this, it is much to be deplored that the 
mast-heads of a southern whale ship are unprovided with 
those enviable little tents or pulpits, called crow's-nests , in 
which the look-outs of a Greenland whaler are protected 
from the inclement weather of the frozen seas. In the fire- 
side narrative of Captain Sleet, entitled “A Voyage among 
the Icebergs, in quest of the Greenland Whale, and incident- 
ally for the re-discovery of the Lost Icelandic Colonies of 
Old Greenland ; ” in this admirable volume, all standers of 
mast-heads are furnished with a charmingly circumstantial 
account of the then recently invented crow's-nest of the 
Glacier, which was the name of Captain Sleet’s good craft. 
He called it the Sleet's crow's-nest, in honour of himself ; he 
being the original inventor and patentee, and free from ell 
ridiculous false delicacy, and holding that if we call our 
own children after our own names (we fathers being the 
original inventors and patentees), so likewise should we 
denominate after ourselves any other apparatus we may 
beget. In shape, the Sleet’s crow’s-nest is something like 
a large tierce or pipe ; it is open above, however, where it is 
furnished with a movable side-screen to keep to windward 
of your head in a hard gale. Being fixed on the summit of 
the mast, you ascend into it through a little trap-hatch in 
the bottom. On the after side, or side next the stern of the 
ship, is a comfortable seat, with a locker underneath for 
umbrellas, comforters, and coats. In front is a leather rack, 
in which to keep your speaking trumpet, pipe, telescope, 
and other nautical conveniences. When Captain Sleet in 
person stood his mast-head in this crow’s nest of his, he 
tells us that he always had a rifle with him (also fixed in 
the rack), together with a powder flask and shot, for the 
purpose of popping off the stray narwhals, or vagrant sea 
unicorns infesting those waters ; for you cannot success- 
fully shoot at them from the deck owing to the resistance 
of the water, but to shoot down upon them is a very dif- 
ferent thing. Now, it was plainly a labour of love for 
Captain Sleet to describe, as he does, all the little detailed 
conveniences of his crow’s-nest; but though he so enlarges 
upon many of these, and though he treats us to a very 
scientific account of his experiments in this crow’s-nest, 
with a small compass he kept there for the purpose of 
counteracting the errors resulting from what is called the 


MOBY DICK. 


151 


“ local attraction ” of all binnacle magnets ; an error ascri- 
bable to the horizontal vicinity of the iron in the ship’s 
planks, and in the Glacier’s case, perhaps, to there having 
been so many broken-down blacksmiths among her crew ; 
I say, that though the Captain is very discreet and scientific 
here, yet, for all his learned “ binnacle deviations,” “ azi- 
muth compass observations,” and “ approximate errors,” he 
knows very well, Captain Sleet, that lie was not so much 
immersed in those profound magnetic meditations, as to 
fail being attracted occasionally towards that well replen- 
ished little case-bottle, so nicely tucked in on one side of 
his crow’s-nest, within easy reach of his hand. Though, 
upon the whole, I greatly admire and even love the brave, 
the honest, and learned Captain ; yet I take it very ill of 
him that he should so utterly ignore that case-bottle, seeing 
what a faithful friend and comforter it must have been, 
while with mittened fingers and hooded head he was study- 
ing the mathematics aloft there in that bird’s nest within 
three or four perches of the pole. 

But if we Southern whale-fishers are not so snugly housed 
aloft as Captain Sleet and his Greenland-men were ; yet that 
disadvantage is greatly counterbalanced by the widely con- 
trasting serenity of those seductive seas in which we South 
fishers mostly float. For one, I used to lounge up the rig- 
ging very leisurely, resting in the top to have a chat with 
Queequeg, or any one else off duty whom I might find there ; 
then ascending a little way further, and throwing a lazy 
leg over the top- sail yard, take a preliminary view of the 
watery pastures, and so at last mount to my ultimate 
destination. 

Let me make a clean breast of it here, and frankly admit 
that I kept but sorry guard. With the problem of the 
universe revolving in me, how could I — being left com- 
pletely to myself at such a thought-engendering altitude, — 
how could I but lightly hold my obligations to observe all 
whale-ships’ standing orders, “ Keep your weather eye open, 
and sing out every time.” 

And let me in this place movingly admonish you, ye ship- 
owners of Nantucket ! Beware of enlisting in your vigilant 
fisheries any lad with lean brow and hollow eye ; given to 
unseasonable meditativeness ; and who offers to ship with 
Phsedon instead of Bowditch in his head. Beware of such 
an one, I say ; your whales must be seen before they can be 
killed ; and this sunken-eyed young Platonist will tow you 


15 *2 


MOBY DICK. 


ten wakes round the world, and never make you one pint 
of sperm the richer. Nor are these monitions at all un- 
needed. For nowadays, the whale-fishery furnishes an 
asylum for many romantic, melancholy, and absent-minded 
young men, disgusted with the carking cares of earth, and 
seeking sentiment in tar and blubber. Childe Harold not 
unfrequently perches himself upon the mast-head of some 
luckless disappointed whale-ship, and in moody phrase 
ejaculates : — 

“Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean, roll! 

Ten thousand blubber-hunters sweep over thee in vain.” 

Yery often do the captains of such ships take those absent- 
minded young philosophers to task, upbraiding them with 
not feeling sufficient “ interest ” in the voyage ; half-hinting 
that they are so hopelessly lost to all honourable ambition, 
as that in their secret souls they would rather not see whales 
than otherwise. But all in vain ; those young Platonists 
have a notion that their vision is imperfect ; they are short- 
sighted ; what use, then, to strain the visual nerve ? They 
have left their opera-glasses at home. 

“ Why, thou monkey,” said a harpooner to one of these 
lads, “ we’ve been cruising now hard upon three years, and 
thou hast not raised a whale yet. Whales are scarce as 
hen’s teeth whenever thou art up here.” Perhaps they 
were ; or perhaps there might have been shoals of them in 
the far horizon ; but lulled into such an opium-like listless- 
ness of vacant, unconscious reverie is this absent-minded 
youth by the blending cadence of waves with thoughts, that 
at last he loses his identity ; takes the mystic ocean at his 
feet for the visible image of that deep, blue, bottomless soul, 
pervading mankind and nature: and every strange, half- 
seen, gliding, beautiful thing that eludes him ; every dimly- 
discovered, uprising fin of some undiscernible form, seems 
to him the embodiment of those elusive thoughts that only 
people the soul by continually flitting through it. In this 
enchanted mood, thy spirit ebbs away to whence it came ; 
becomes diffused through time and space ; like Crammer’s 
sprinkled Pantheistic ashes forming at last a part of every 
shore the round globe over. 

There is no life in thee, now, except that rocking life im- 
parted by a gently rolling ship ; by her, borrowed from the 
sea; by the sea, from the inscrutable tides of God. But 
while this sleep, this dream is on ye, move your foot or hand 


MOBY DICK. 


153 

an inch ; slip your hold at all ; and your identity comes back in 
horror. Over Descartian vortices you hover. And perhaps, 
at mid-day, in the fairest weather, with one half-throttled 
shriek you drop through that transparent air into the sum- 
mer sea, no more to rise forever. Heed it well, ye Pan- 
theists I 


CHAPTER XXXVI. 

THE QUARTER-DECK. 

( Enter Ahab : Then, all.) 

It was not a great while after the affair of the pipe, that 
one morning shortly after breakfast, Ahab, as was his wont, 
ascended the cabin gangway to the deck. There most sea- 
captains usually walk at that hour, as country gentlemen, 
after the same meal, take a few turns in the garden. 

Soon his steady, ivory stride was heard, as to and fro he 
paced his old rounds, upon planks so familiar to his tread, 
that they were all over dented, like geological stones, with 
the peculiar mark of his walk. Did you fixedly gaze, too, 
upon that ribbed and dented brow ; there also, you would 
see still stranger footprints — the footprints of his one un- 
sleeping, ever-pacing thought. 

But on the occasion in question, those dents looked 
deeper, even as his nervous step that morning left a 
deeper mark. And, so full of his thought was Ahab, 
that at every uniform turn that he made, now at the main- 
mast and now at the binnacle, you could almost see 
that thought turn in him as he turned, and pace hi him 
as he paced; so completely possessing him, -indeed, that 
it all but seemed the inward mould of every outer move- 
ment. 

“ D’ye mark him, Flask ? ” whispered Stubb ; “ the 
chick that’s in him pecks the shell. ’Twill soon be out.” 

The hours wore on ; — Ahab now shut up within his cabin ; 
anon, pacing the deck, with the same intense bigotry of pur- 
pose in his aspect. 

It drew near the close of day. Suddenly he came to a 
halt by the bulwarks, and inserting his bone leg into the 


154 


MOBY DICK. 


auger-hole there, and with one hand grasping a shroud, he 
ordered Starbuck to send everybody aft. 

“Sir!” said the mate, astonished at an order seldom 
or never given on shipboard except in some extraordinary 
case. 

“ Send everybody aft,” repeated Ahab. “ Mast-heads, 
there ! come down ! ” 

When the entire ship’s company were assembled, and 
with curious and not wholly unapprehensive faces, were 
eyeing him, for he looked not unlike the weather horizon 
when a storm is coming up, Ahab, after rapidly glancing 
over the bulwarks, and then darting his eyes among the 
crew, started from his standpoint ; and as though not a soul 
were nigh him resumed his heavy turns upon the deck. 
With bent head and half-slouched hat he continued to pace, 
unmindful of the wondering whispering among the men ; 
till Stubb cautiously whispered to Flask, that Ahab must 
have summoned them there for the purpose of witnessing a 
pedestrian feat. But this did not last long. Vehemently 
pausing he cried : — 

“ What do ye do when ye see a whale, men ? ” 

“ Sing out for him ! ” was the impulsive rejoinder from a 
score of clubbed voices. 

“ Good ! ” cried Ahab, with a wild approval in his tones ; 
observing the hearty animation into which his unexpected 
question had so magnetically thrown them. 

“ And what do ye next, men?” 

“ Lower away, and after him ! ” 

“ And what tune is it ye pull to, men ? ” 

“ A dead whale or a stove boat ! ” 

More and more strangely and fiercely glad and approv- 
ing, grew the countenance of the old man at every shout ; 
while the mariners began to gaze curiously at each other, 
as if marvelling how it was that they themselves be- 
came so excited at such seemingly purposeless questions. 

But, they were all eagerness again, as Ahab, now half- 
revolving in his pivot-hole, with one hand reaching high up 
a shroud, and tightly, almost convulsively grasping* it, 
addressed them thus 

“ All ye mast-headers have before now heard me give 
orders about a white whale. Look ye! d’ye see this 
Spanish ounce of gold ? ” — holding up a broad bright coin 
to the sun — “ it is a sixteen dollar piece, men. D’ye see it ? 
Mr. Starbuck, hand me yon top-maul.” 


MOBY DICK. 


155 


While the mate was getting the hammer, Ahab, without 
speaking, was slowly rubbing the gold piece against the 
skirts of his jacket, as if to heighten its lustre, and with- 
out using any words was meanwhile lowly humming to 
himself, producing a sound so strangely muffled and in- 
articulate that it seemed the mechanical humming of the 
wheels of his vitality in him. 

Receiving the top-maul from Starbuck, he advanced to- 
wards the main-mast with the hammer uplifted in one 
hand, exhibiting the gold with the other, and with a high 
raised voice exclaiming: “Whosoever of ye raises me a 
white-headed whale with a wrinkled brow and a crooked 
jaw ; whosoever of ye raises me that white-headed whale, 
with three holes punctured in his starboard fluke — look ye, 
whosoever of ye raises me that same white whale, he shall 
have this gold ounce, my boys ! ” 

“ Huzza ! huzza ! ” cried the seamen, as with swinging tar- 
paulins they hailed the act of nailing the gold to the mast. 

“ It’s a white whale, I say,” resumed Ahab, as he threw 
down the top-maul ; “ a white whale. Skin your eyes for 
him, men ; look sharp for white water ; if ye see but a 
bubble, sing out.” 

All this while Tashtego, Daggoo, and Queequeg had 
looked on with even more intense interest and surprise than 
the rest, and at the mention of the wrinkled brow and 
crooked jaw they had started as if each was separately 
touched by some specific recollection. 

“ Captain Ahab,” said Tashtego, “ that white whale must 
be the same that some call Moby Dick.” 

“ Moby Dick ? ” shouted Ahab. “ Do ye know the white 
whale then, Tash ? ” 

“Does he fan-tail a little curious, sir, before he goes 
down ? ” said the Gay-Header deliberately. 

“And has he a curious spout, too,” said Daggoo, “very 
bushy, even for a parmacettv, and mighty quick, Captain 
Ahab?” 

“ And he have one, two, tree — oh ! good many iron in 
him hide, too, Captain,” cried Queequeg disjointedly, “ all 
twisketee be-twisk, like him— him— ” faltering hard for a 
word, and screwing his hand round and round as through 
uncorking a bottle — “ like him — him ” 

“ Corkscrew ! ” cried Ahab, “ aye, Queequeg, the harpoons 
lie all twisted and wrenched in him ; aye, Daggoo, his spout 
is a big one, like a whole shock of wheat, and white as a pile 


156 


MOBY DICK. 


of our Nantucket wool after the great annual slieep-shear- 
ing; aye, Tashtego, and he fan-tails like a split jib in a squall. 
Death and devils ! men, it is Moby Dick ye have seen— Moby 
Dick — Moby Dick ! ” 

“ Captain Ahab” said Starbuck, who with Stubb and 
Flask, had thus far been eyeing his superior with increasing 
surprise, but at last seemed struck with a thought which 
somewhat explained all the wonder. “ Captain Ahab, I 
have heard of Moby Dick — but it was not Moby Dick that 
took off thy leg?” 

“Who told thee that?” cried Ahab; then pausing, 
“ Aye, Starbuck ; aye, my hearties all round ; it was Moby 
Dick that dismasted me ; Moby Dick that brought me to this 
dead stump I stand on now. Aye, aye,” he shouted with a 
terrific, loud, animal sob, like that of a heart-stricken 
moose ; “ Aye, aye ! it was that accursed white whale that 
razed me ; made a poor pegging lubber of me forever and 
a day ! ” Then tossing both arms, with measureless impreca- 
tions he shouted out : “ Aye, aye ! and I’ll chase him round 
Good Hope, and round the Horn, and round the Norway 
Maelstrom, and round perdition’s flames before I give him 
up. And this is what ye have shipped for, men ! to chase 
that white whale on both sides of land, and over all sides 
of earth, till he spouts black blood and rolls fin out. What 
say ye, men, will ye splice hands on it, now ? I think ye do 
look brave.” 

“ Aye, aye ! ” shouted the harpooneers and seamen, run- 
ning closer to the excited old man : “ A sharp eye for the 
White Whale ; a sharp lance for Moby Dick ! ” 

“ God bless ye,” he seemed to half sob and half shout. 
“ God bless ye, men. Steward ! go draw the great measure 
of grog. But what’s this long face about, Mr. Starbuck ; 
wilt thou not chase the white whale? art not game for 
Moby Dick?” 

“ I am game for his crooked jaw, and for the jaws of 
Death too, Captain Ahab, if it fairly comes in the way of 
the business we follow ; but I came here to hunt whales, 
not my commander’s vengeance. How many barrels will 
thy vengeance yield thee even if thou gettest it, Captain 
Ahab? it will not fetch thee much in our Nantucket 
market.” 

“ Nantucket market ! Hoot ! But come closer, Starbuck ; 
thou requirest a little lower layer. Tf money’s to be the 
measurer, man, and the accountants have computed their 


MOB V DICK. 


157 


great counting-house the globe, by girdling it with guineas, 
one to every three parts of an inch ; then, let me tell thee, 
that my vengeance will fetch a great premium here ! ” 

“ He smites his chest,” whispered Stubb, “ what’s that 
for ? methinks it rings most vast, but hollow.” 

“Vengeance on a dumb brute!” cried Starbuck, “that 
simply smote thee from blindest instinct ! Madness ! To 
be enraged with a dumb thing, Captain Ahab, seems blas- 
phemous.” 

“ Hark ye yet again, — the little lower layer. All visible 
objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each 
event — in the living act, the undoubted deed — there, some 
unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings 
of its features from behind the unreasoning mask. If man 
will strike, strike through the mask ! How can the pris- 
oner reach outside except by thrusting through the wall ? 
To me, the white whale is that wall, shoved near to me. 
Sometimes I think there’s naught beyond. But ’tis enough. 
He tasks me ; he heaps me ; I see in him outrageous strength, 
with an inscrutable malice sinewing it. That inscrutable 
thing is chiefly what I hate ; and be the white whale agent, 
or be the white whale principal, I will wreak that hate upon 
him. Talk not to me of blasphemy, man ; I’d strike the 
sun if it insulted me. For could the sun do that, then could 
I do the others ; since there is ever a sort of fair play herein, 
jealousy presiding over all creations. But not my master, 
man, is even that fair play. Who’s over me ? Truth hath 
no confines. Take off thine eye! more intolerable than 
fiends’ glarings is a doltish stare ! So, so ; thou reddenest 
and palest ; my heat has melted thee to anger-glow. But 
look ye, Starbuck, what is said in heat, that thing unsays 
itself. There are men from whom warm words are small 
indignity. I meant not to incense thee. Let it go. Look ! 
see yonder Turkish cheeks of spotted tawn — living, breath- 
ing pictures painted by the sun. The Pagan leopards — the 
unrecking and unworshipping things, that live ; and seek, 
and give no reasons for the torrid life they feel ! The crew, 
man, the crew ! Are they not one and all with Ahab, in 
this matter of the whale? See Stubb! he laughs ! See yon- 
der Chilian ! he snorts to think of it. Stand up amid the 
general hurricane, thy one tost sapling cannot, Starbuck! 
And what is it ? Reckon it. ’Tis but to help strike a fin ; 
no wondrous feat for Starbuck. What is it more ? From 
this one poor hunt, then, the best lance out of all Nantucket, 


158 


MOBY DICK. 


surely he will not hang hack, when every foremost hand has 
clutched a whetstone ? Ah! constrainings seize thee ; I see! 
the billow lifts thee ! Speak, but speak !— Aye, aye ! thy 
silence, then, that voices thee. (Aside) Something shot from 
: my dilated nostrils, he has inhaled it in his lungs. Star- 
buck now is mine; cannot oppose me now, without re- 
hellion.” 

“ God keep .‘me ! — keep us all ! ” murmured Starbuck, 
■ lowly. 

But in his joy at the enchanted, tacit acquiescence of the 
mate, Ahab did not hear his foreboding invocation ; nor yet 
the low laugh from the hold ; nor yet the presaging vibra- 
tions of the winds in the cordage ; nor yet the hollow flap 
of the sails against the masts, as for a moment their hearts 
sank in. For -again Starbuck’s downcast eyes lighted' up 
with the stubbornness of life ; the subterranean laugh died 
away; the winds blew on; the sails filled out; the Ship 
heaved and rolled as before. Ah, ye admonitions and warn- 
ings ! why stay ye not when ye come? But rather ar^ ye 
predictions than warnings, ye shadows ! Yet not so much 
predictions from without, as verifications of the foregoing 
things within. f For with little external to constrain us, the 
innermost necessities in our being, these still drive us op.. 

“ The measure! the measure! ” cried Ahab. 

Receiving the brimming pewter, and turning to the har- 
poon ers, he ordered them to produce their weapons. Then 
ranging them before him near the capstan, with their har- 
poons in their hands, while his three mates stood at?his 
side with their lances, and the rest of the ship’s company 
formed a circle round the group ; . he stood for an instant 
searchingly eyeing every man of his crew. But those wild 
eyes met his, *as the bloodshot eyes of the prairie wolves 
meet the eye Of their leader, ere he rushes on at their head 
in the trail of the bison; but, alas ! only to fall into the 
hidden snare of the Indian. 

“ Drink and pass ! ” he cried, handing the heavy charged 
flagon to the nearest seaman. “ The crew alone now drink. 
Round with it, round ! Short draughts — long swallows, 
men ; ’tis hot as Satan’s hoof. So, so ; it goes round excel- 
lently. It spiralizes in ye; forks out at the serpent-snap- 
ping eye. Well done ; almost drained. That way it went, 
this way it comes. Hand it me— here’s a hollow ! Men, 
ye seem the years ; so brimming life is gulped and gone. 
Steward, refill! s 


MOBY DICK. 


159 


“ Attend now, my braves. I have mustered ye all round 
this capstan ; and ye mates, flank me with your lances ; and 
ye harpooners, stand there with your irons ; and ye, stout 
mariners, ring me in, that I may in some sort revive a noble 
custom of my fisherman fathers before me. O men, you 

will yet see that Ha ! boy, come back ? bad pennies 

come not sooner. Hand it me. Why, now, this pewter 
had run brimming again, were’t not thou St. Vitus’ imp — 
away, thou ague ! 

. “ Advance, ye mates ! Cross your lances full before me. 
Well done ! Let me touch the axis.” So saying, with ex- 
tended arm, he grasped the three level, radiating lances kt 
their crossed centre ; while so doing, suddenly and ner- 
vously twitched them ; meanwhile, glancing intently from 
Starbuck to Stnbb ; from Stubb to Flask. It seemed as 
though, by some nameless, interior volition, he would fain 
have shocked into them the same fiery emotion accumulated 
within the Leyden jar of his own magnetic life. The three 
mates quailed ^before his strong, sustained, and mystic 
aspect. StubbJ and Flask looked sideways from him ; Hie 
honest eye of Starbuck fell downright.; 

“ In vain ! ” pried Ahab ; “ but, maybe, ’tis well. For 
did ye three bid; once take the full -foiled shock, then mine 
own electric thing, that had perhaps Expired from out me. 
Perchance, too^it would have dropped ye dead. Perchance 
ye need it not. Down lances ! And now, ye mates, I?do 
appoint ye three cupbearers to my three pagan kinsnien 
there — yon three most honorable gentlemen and noblemen, 
my valiant harpooners. Disdain the task ? What, when 
the great Pope washes the feet of beggars, using his tiara 
for ewer ? Oh, my sweet cardinals ! your own condescen- 
sion, that shall bend ye to it. I do not order ye ; ye will it. 
Cut your seizings and draw the poles, ye harpooners ! ” | 

Silently obeying the order, the three harpooners how 
stood with the : detached iron part of their harpoons, some 
three feet long, held, barbs up, before him. 

“ Stab me not with that keen steel ! Cant them ; cant 
them over ! know ye not the gablet end ? Turn up “the 
socket ! So ; so, now ye cupbearers, advance. The irons ! 
take them ; hold them while I fill ! Forthwith, slOwdy 
going from one officer to the other, he brimmed the harpoon 
socket with the fiery waters from the pewter. 

“ How, three to three, ye stand. Commend the murder- 
ous chalices ! Bestow them, ye who are now made parties 


MOBY LICK. 


160 

to this indissoluble league. Ha! Starbuck! but the deed is 
done ! Yon ratifying sun now waits to sit upon it. Drink ! 
ye harpooners ! drink and swear, ye men that man the 
deathful whaleboat’s bow — Death to Moby Dick! God 
hunt us all, if we do not hunt Moby Dick to his death!” 
The long, barbed steel goblets were lifted ; and to cries and 
maledictions against the white whale, the spirits were 
simultaneously quaffed down with a hiss. Starbuck paled, 
and turned, and shivered. Once more, and finally, the re- 
plenished pewter went the rounds among the frantic crew ; 
when, waving his free hand to them, they all dispersed ; 
and Ahab retired within his cabin. 


CHAPTER XXXVII. 

SUNSET. 

The ccihin / by the stern windows : Ahab sitting alone , and 
gazing out . 

I leave a white and turbid wake; pale waters, paler 
cheeks, where’er I sail. The envious billows sidelong swell 
to whelm my track ; let them ; but first I pass. 

Yonder, by the ever-brimming goblet’s rim, the warm 
waves blush like wine. The gold brow plumbs the blue. 
The diver sun — slow dived from noon, — goes down ; my 
soul mounts up ! she wearies with her endless hill. Is, 
then, the crown too heavy that I wear ? this Iron Crown of 
Lombardy. Yet is it bright with many a gem; I, the 
wearer, see not its far flashings ; but darkly feel that I 
wear that, that dazzlingly confounds. ’Tis iron — that I 
know — not gold. ’Tis split, too — that I feel ; the jagged 
edge galls me so, my brain seems to beat against the solid 
metal ; aye, steel skull, mine ; the sort that needs no helmet 
in the most brain-battering fight ! 

Dry heat upon my brow? Oh ! time was, when as the 
sunrise nobly spurred me, so the sunset soothed. No more. 
This lovely light, it lights not me ; all loveliness is anguish 
to me, since I can ne’er enjoy. Gifted with the high per- 
ception, I lack the low, enjoying power; damned, most 


t 


MOBY DICK. 


161 


subtly and most malignantly ! damned in the midst of 
Paradise ! Good-night — good-night ! ( waving his hand he 
moves from the window.) 

’Twas not so hard a task. I thought to find one stub- 
born, at the least ; but my one cogged circle fits into all 
their various wheels, and they revolve. Or, if you will, like 
so many ant-hills of powder, they all stand before me ; and 
I their match. Oh, hard ! that to fire others, the match 
itself must needs be wasting ! What I’ve dared, I’ve willed ; 
and what I’ve willed, I’ll do ! They think me mad — Star- 
buck does; but I’m demoniac, I am madness maddened! 
That wild madness that’s only calm to comprehend itself ! 
The prophecy was that I should be dismembered ; and — 
Aye ! I lost this leg. I now prophesy that I will dismember 
my dismemberer. Now, then, be the prophet and the ful- 
filler one. That’s more than ye, ye great gods, ever were. 
I laugh and hoot at ye, ye cricket players, ye pugilists, ye 
deaf Burkes and Blinded Bendigoes ! I will not say as 
schoolboys do to bullies, — Take some one of your own size ; 
don’t pommel me ! No, ye’ve knocked me down, and I am up 
again ; but ye have run and hidden. Come forth from behind 
your cotton bags ] I have no long gun to reach ye. Come, 
Ahab’s compliments to ye ; come and see if you can swerve 
me. Swerve me? ye cannot swerve me, else ye swerve 
yourselves ! man has ye there. Swerve me ? The path to 
my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails, whereon my soul is 
grooved to run. Over unsounded gorges, through die rifled 
hearts of mountains, under torrents’ beds, unerringly I rush ! 
Naught’s an obstacle, naught’s an angle to the iron way ! 


CHAPTER XXXVIII. 

DUSK. 

By the Mainmast ; Starbuck leaning against it. 

My soul is more than matched ; -she’s overmanned ; and 
by a madman ! Insufferable sting, that sanity should ground 
arms on such a field! But he drilled deep down, and 
blasted all my reason out of me ! I think I see his impious 
end ; but feel that I must help him to it. Will I, nill I, the 
ineffable thing has tied me to him ; tows me with a cable 


162 


MOBY DICK . 


I have no knife to cut. Horrible old man ! Who’s over 
him he cries ; — aye, he would be a democrat to all above ; 
look, how he lords it over all below ! Oh ! I plainly see my 
miserable office, — to obey, rebelling; and worse yet, to hate 
with touch of pity ! For in his eyes I read some lurid woe 
would shrivel me up, had I it. Yet is there hope. Time 
and tide flow wide. The hated whale has the round, watery 
world to swim in, as the small gold-fish has its glassy globe. 
His heaven-insulting purpose, God may wedge aside. I 
would up heart, were it not like lead. But my whole 
clock’s run down ; my heart the all -controlling weight, I 
have no key to lift again. 

[ A burst of revelry from the forecastle. 

Oh, God ! to sail with such a heathen crew that have 
small touch of human mothers in them ! Whelped some- 
where by the sharkish sea. The white whale is their demi- 
gorgon. Hark ! the infernal orgies ! that revelry is for- 
ward ! mark the unfaltering silence aft ! Methinks it pic- 
tures life. Foremost through the sparkling sea shoots on 
the gay, embattled, bantering bow, but only to drag dark 
Ahab after it, where he broods within his sternward cabin, 
builded over the dead water of the wake, and further on, 
hunted by its wolfish gurglings. The long howl thrills me 
through ! Peace ! ye revellers, and set the watch ! Oh, 
life ! ’tis in an hour like this, with soul beat down and held 
to knowledge, — as wild, untutored things are forced to feed 
— Oh, life ! ’tis now that I do feel the latent horror in thee ! 
but ’tis not me ! that horror’s out of me ! and with the soft 
feeling of the human in me, yet will I try to fight ye, ye 
grim, phantom futures ! Stand by me, hold me, bind me, 
O ye blessed influences ! 


CHAPTER XXXIX. 

FIRST NIGHT-WATCH. 

FORE-TOP. 

(Stubb solus , and mending a brace.) 

Ha ! ha ! ha ! ha ! hem ! clear my throat ! — I’ve been 
thinking over it ever since, and that ha, ha’s the final con- 


MOBY DICK. 


163 


sequence. Why so ? Because a laugh’s the wisest, easiest 
answer to all that’s queer ; and come what will, one com- 
fort’s always left — that unfailing comfort is, it’s all pre- 
destinated. I heard not all his talk with Starbuck ; but to 
my poor eye Starbuck then looked something as I the other 
evening felt. Be sure the old Mogul has fixed him, too. I 
twigged it, knew it ; had had the gift, might readily have 
prophesied it — for when I clapped my eye upon his skull I 
saw it. Well, Stubb, wise Stubb — that’s my title — well, 
Stubb, what of it, Stubb? Here’s a carcase. I know not 
all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I’ll go to 
it laughing. Such a waggish leering as lurks in all your 
horribles ! I feel funny. Fa, la, lirra, skirra! What’s my 
juicy little pear at home doing now ? Crying its eyes out ? 
— Giving a party to the last arrived harpooners, I dare say, 
gay as a frigate’s pennant, and so am I — fa, la! lirra, skirra ! 
Oh! 


We’ll drink to-night with hearts as light, 

To love, as gay and fleeting 
As bubbles that swim, on the beaker’s brim, 

And break on the lips while meeting. 

A brave stave that — who calls! Mr. Starbuck? Aye, 
aye, sir — (Aside) lie’s my superior, he has his too, if I’m 
not mistaken. — Aye, aye, sir, just through with this job — 
coming. 


CHAPTER XL. 


MIDNIGHT, FORECASTLE. 


HARPOONEERS AND SAILORS. 

( Foresail rises and discovers the icatch standing , lounging , 
leaning , and lying in various attitudes , all singing in chorus.) 


Farewell and adieu to you, Spanish ladies ! 

Farewell and adieu to you, ladies of Spain ! 

Our captain’s commanded. — 

1ST NANTUCKET SAILOR. 

Oh, boys, don’t be sentimental ; it’s bad for the diges- 
tion ! Take a tonic, follow me ! 

(Sings, and allfolloic.) 


164 


MOBY DICK. 


Our captain stood upon the deck, 

A spy-glass in liis hand, 

A viewing of those gallant whales 
That blew at every strand. 

Oh, your tubs in your boats, my boys, 

And by your braces stand, 

And we’ll have one of those fine whales, 

Hand, boys, over hand ! 

So, be cheery, my lads ! may your hearts never fail ! 

While the bold harpooner is striking the whale ! 

mate’s voice from the quarter-deck. 

Eight bells there, forward ! 

2d NANTUCKET SAILOR. 

Avast the chorus ! Eight bells there ! d’ye hear, bell- 
boy ? Strike the bell eight, thou Pip ! thou blackling ! and 
let me call the watch. I’ve the sort of mouth for that — 
the hogshead mouth. So, so, (thrusts his head doicn the 
scuttle,) Star — bo-l-e-e-n-s, a-h-o-y ! Eight bells there be- 
low ! Tumble up ! 


DUTCH SAILOR. 

Grand snoozing to-night, maty ; fat night for that. I 
marked this in our old Mogul’s wine ; it’s quite as deaden- 
ing to some as filliping to others. We sing; they sleep — 
aye, lie down there, like ground-tier butts. At ’em again ! 
There, take this copper-pump, and hail ’em through it. 
Tell ’em to avast dreaming of their lasses. Tell ’em it’s 
the resurrection ; they must kiss their last, and come to 
judgment. That’s the way — that's it ; thy throat ain’t 
spoiled with eating Amsterdam butter. 

FRENCH SAILOR. 

Hist, boys ! let’s have a jig or two before we ride to anchor 
in Blanket Bay. What say ye? There comes the other 
watch. Stand by all legs ! Pip ! little Pip ! hurrah with 
your tambourine ! 


pip. 

(SulJcy and sleepy.) 

Don’t know where it is. 

FRENCH SAILOR. 

Beat thy belly, then, and wag thy ears. Jig it, men, I 
say ; merry’s the word ; hurrah ! Damn me, won’t you 
dance? Form, now, Indian-file, and gallop into the double- 
shuffle ? Throw yourselves ! Legs ! legs ! 


MOBY DICK. 


165 


ICELAND SAILOR. 

I don’t like your floor, maty; it’s too springy to my 
taste. I’m used to ice-floors. I’m sorry to throw cold 
water on the subject ; but excuse me. 

MALTESE SAILOR. 

Me too ; where’s your girls ? Who but a fool would take 
his left hand by his right, and say to himself, how d’ye do ? 
Partners ! I must have partners ! 

SICILIAN SAILOR. 

Aye ; girls and a green ! — then I’ll hop with ye ; yea, 
turn grasshopper ! 

LONG-ISLAND SAILOR. 

Well, well, ye sulkies, there’s plenty more of us. Hoe 
corn when you may, say I. All legs go to harvest soon. 
Ah! here come’s the music ; now for it! 

AZORE SAILOR. 

( Ascending , and pitching the tambourine up the scuttle.) 

Here you are, Pip; and there’s the windlass-bitts ; up 
you mount ! How, boys ! 

( The half of them dance to the tambourine ; some go below ; 
some sleep or lie among the coils of rigging. Oaths a-plenty.) 

AZORE SAILOR. 

(Dancing.) 

Go it, Pip ! Bang it, bell-boy ! Rig it, dig it, stig it, 
quig it, bell-boy ! Make fire-flies ; break the jinglers ! 

pip. 

Jinglers, you say? — there goes another, dropped off; I 
pound it so. 

CHINA SAILOR. 

Rattle thy teeth, then, and pound away ; make a pagoda 
of thyself. 

FRENCH SAILOR. 

Merry-mad ! Hold up thy hoop, Pip, till I jump through 
it ! Split jibs ! tear yourselves ! 

TASHTEGO. 

( Quietly smoking.) 

That’s a white man ; he calls that fun : humph ! I save 
my sweat. 


MOBY DICK. 


166 


OLD MANX SAILOR. 

I wonder whether those jolly lads bethink them of what 
they are dancing over. I’ll dance over your grave, I will — 
that’s the bitterest threat of your night-women, that beats 
head-winds round corners. O Christ ! to think of the 
green navies and the green-skulled crews! Well, well; 
belike the whole world’s a ball, as you scholars have it ; 
and so ’tis right to make one ball-room of it. Dance on, 
lads, you’re young ; I was once. 

3d NANTUCKET SAILOR. 

Spell oh !— whew! this is worse than pulling after whales 
in a calm — give us a whiff, Tash. 

( They cease dancing , and gather in clusters. Meantime 
the sky darkens — the wind rises.) 

LASCAR SAILOR. 

By Brahma ! boys, it’ll be douse sail soon. The sky- 
born, high-tide Ganges turned to wind ! Thou sliowest 
thy black brow, Seeva ! 

MALTESE SAILOR. 

( Reclining and shaking his cap.) 

It’s the waves — the snow’s caps turn to jig it now. 
They’ll shake their tassels soon. Now would all the waves 
were women, then I’d go drown, and chassee with them 
evermore ! There’s naught so sweet on earth — heaven may 
not match it ! — as those swift glances of warm, wild bosoms 
in the dance, when the over-arbouring arms hide such ripe, 
bursting grapes. 

SICILIAN SAILOR. 

{Reclining .) 

Tell me not of it! Hark ye, lad — fleet interlacings of 
the limbs — lithe sway ings — coyings — flutterings! lip! heart 
hip ! all graze : unceasing touch and go ! not taste, observe 
ye, else come satiety. Eh, Pagan ? (Nudging.) 

TAIIITAN SAILOR. 

(Reclining on a mat.) 

Hail, holy nakedness of our dancing girls ! — the Heeva- 
Heeva ! Ah ! low veiled high palmed Tahiti ! I still rest me 
on thy mat, but the soft soil has slid ! I saw thee woven 
in the wood, my mat ! green the first day I brought ye 


MOBY DICK. 


167 


thence ; now worn and wilted quite. Ah me ! — not thou 
nor I can bear the change ! How then, if so be transplanted 
to yon sky ? Hear I the roaring streams from Pirohitee’s 
peak of spears, when they leap down the crags and drown 
the villages! — The blast! the blast! Up, spine, and meet 
it ! ( Leaps to his feet.) 

PORTUGUESE SAILOR. 

ITow the sea rolls swashing ’gainst the side! Stand by 
for reefing, hearties ! the winds are just crossing swords, 
pell-mell they’ll, go lunging presently. 

DANISH SAILOR. 

Crack, crack, old ship ! so long as thou crackest, thou 
holdest ! Well done ! The mate there holds ye to it stiffly. 
He’s no more afraid than the isle fort at Cattegat, put there 
to fight the Baltic with storm-lashed guns, on which the 
sea-salt cakes ! 

4th NANTUCKET SAILOR. 

He has his orders, mind ye that. I heard old Ahab tell 
him he must always kill a squall, something as they hurst 
a waterspout with a pistol — fire your ship right into it ! 

ENGLISH SAILOR. 

Blood ! but that old man’s a grand old cove ! We are the 
lads to hunt him up his whale ! 

ALL. 

Aye ! aye ! 

OLD MANX SAILOR. 

How the three pines shake ! Pines are the hardest sort 
of tree to live when shifted to any other soil, and here 
there’s none but the crew’s cursed clay. Steady, helms- 
man! steady. This is the sort of weather when brave 
hearts snap ashore, and keeled hulls split at sea. Our cap- 
tain has his birth-mark ; look yonder, boys, there’s another 
in the sky — lurid-like, ye see, all else pitch black. 

DAGGOO. 

What of that? Who’s afraid of black’s afraid of me! 
I’m quarried out of it ! 

SPANISH SAILOR. 

(Aside.) He wants to bully, ah !— the old grudge makes 
me touchy. (Advancing.) Aye, harpooner, thy race is 


MOBY DICK. 


168 

tlie undeniable dark side of mankind— devilish dark at that. 
No offence. 

daggoo (grimly.) ' 

None. 

ST. JAGO’s SAILOR. 

That Spaniard’s mad or drunk. But that can’t be, or 
else in his one case our old Mogul’s fire-waters are some- 
what long in working. 

5TH NANTUCKET SAILOR. 

What’s that I saw — lightning ? Yes. 

SPANISH SAILOR. 

No ; Daggoo showing his teeth. 

daggoo (springing). 

Swallow thine, mannikin! White skin, white liver ! 

Spanish sailor ( meeting him). 

Knife thee heartily ! big frame, small spirit ! 

ALL. 

A row ! a row ! a row ! 

tashtego (with a whiff). 

A row a’ low, and a row aloft— Gods and men — both 
brawlers ! Humph ! 

BELFAST SAILOR. 

A row ! arrah, a row ! The Virgin be blessed, a row ! 
Plunge in with ye ! 

ENGLISH SAILOR. 

Fair play! Snatch the Spaniard’s knife! A ring, a ring! 

OLD MANX SAILOR. 

Ready formed. There ! the ringed horizon. In that ring 
Cain struck Abel. Sweet work, right work ! No? Why 
then, God, mad’st thou the ring ? 

mate’s voice from the quarter-deck 
Hands by the halyards ! in top-gallant sails ! Stand by 
to reef topsails ! 

ALL. 

The squall ! the squall ! jump, my jollies ! ( They scatter.) 

pip (shrinking under the windlass). 

Jollies? Lord help such jollies! Crish, crash! there 


MOB Y DICK. 


169 

goes the jib-stay ! Blang-wbang ! God ! Duck lower, Pip, 
here comes the royal yard ! It’s worse than being in the 
whirled woods, the last day of the year ! Who’d go climb- 
ing after chestnuts now ? But there they go, all cursing, 
and here I don’t. Fine prospects to ’em ; they’re on the road 
to heaven. Hold on hard! Jimmini, what a squall! But 
those chaps there are worse yet — they are your white squalls, 
they. White squalls? white whale, shirr! shirr! Here 
have I heard all their chat just now, and the white whale — 
shirr ! shirr ! — hut spoken of once ! and only this evening — 
it makes me jingle all over like my tambourine — that ana- 
conda of an old man swore ’em in to hunt him ! Oh, thou 
big white God aloft there somewhere in yon darkness, have 
mercy on this small black boy down here ; preserve him from 
all men that have no bowels to feel fear ! 


CHAPTER XLI. 

MOBY DICK. 

I, Ishmael, was one of that crew; my shouts had gone up 
with the rest ; my oath had been welded with theirs ; and 
stronger I shouted, and more did I hammer and clinch my 
oath, because of the dread in my soul. A wild, mystical, 
sympathetical feeling was in me ; Allah’s quenchless feud 
seemed mine. With greedy ear I learned the history of 
that murderous monster against whom I and all the others 
had taken our oaths of violence and revenge. 

For some time past, though at intervals only, the unac- 
companied, secluded White Whale had haunted those 
uncivilised seas mostly frequented by the Sperm Whale 
fishermen. But not all of them knew of his existence ; only 
a few of them, comparatively, had knowingly seen him ; 
while the number who as yet had actually and knowingly 
given battle to him, was small indeed. For, owing to the 
large number of whale-cruisers ; the disorderly way they 
were sprinkled over the entire watery circumference, many 
of them adventurously pushing their quest along solitary 
latitudes, so as seldom or never for a whole twelvemonth 
or more on a stretch, to encounter a single news-telling sail 
of any sort ; the inordinate length of each separate voyage ; 
the irregularity of the times of sailing from home ; all these, 


170 


MOBY DICK. 


with other circumstances, direct and indirect, long ob- 
structed the spread through the whole world- wide whaling- 
fleet of the special individualizing tidings concerning Moby 
Dick. It was hardly to be doubted, that several vessels 
reported to have encountered, at such or such a time, or on 
such or such a meridian, a sperm whale of uncommon 
magnitude and malignity, which whale, after doing great 
mischief to his assailants, had completely escaped them ; to 
some minds it was not an unfair presumption, I say, that the 
whale in question must have been no other than Moby Dick. 
Y et as of late the Sperm Whale fishery had been marked 
by various and not Unfrequent instances of great ferocity, 
cunning, and malice in the monster attacked ; therefore it 
was, that those who by accident ignorantly gave battle to 
Moby Dick ; such hunters, perhaps, for the most part, were 
content to ascribe the peculiar terror he bred, more, as it 
were, to the perils of the Sperm Whale fishery at large, 
than to the individual cause. In that way, mostly, the 
disastrous encounter between Ahab and the whale had 
hitherto been popularly regarded. 

And as for those who, previously hearing of the White 
Whale, by chance caught sight of him ; in the beginning of 
the thing they had every one of them, almost, as boldly 
and fearlessly lowered for him, as for any other whale of 
that species. But at length, such calamities did ensue in 
these assaults — not restricted to sprained wrists and 
ankles, broken limbs, or devouring amputations — but fatal 
to the last degree of fatality ; those repeated disastrous re- 
pulses, all accumulating and piling their terrors upon Moby 
Dick ; those things had gone far to shake the fortitude of 
many brave hunters, to whom the story of the White 
Whale had eventually come. 

Nor did wild rumours of all sorts fail to exaggerate, and 
still the more horrify the true histories of these deadly 
encounters. For not only do fabulous rumours naturally 
grow out of the very body of all surprising terrible events, 
—as the smitten tree gives birth to its fungi ; but, in mari- 
time life, far more than in that of terra firma, wild rumours 
abound, wherever there is any adequate reality for them to 
cling to. And as the sea surpasses the land in this matter, 
so the whale fishery surpasses every other sort of mari- 
time life, in the wonderfulness and fearfulness of the ru- 
mours which sometimes circulate there. For not only are 
whalemen as a body unexempt from that ignorance and su- 


MOBY DICK. 


171 


perstitiousness hereditary to all sailors ; but of all sailors, 
they are by all odds the most directly brought into contact 
with whatever is appallingly astonishing in the sea; face 
to face they not only eye its greatest marvels, but, hand to 
jaw, give battle to them. Alone, in such remotest waters, 
that though you sailed a thousand miles, and passed a 
thousand shores, you would not come to any chisled hearth- 
stone, or aught hospitable beneath that part of the sun ; in 
such latitudes and longitudes, pursuing too such a calling 
as he does, the whaleman is wrapped by influences all 
tending to make his fancy pregnant with many a mighty 
birth. 

No wonder, then, that ever gathering volume from the 
mere transit over the widest watery spaces, the outblown 
rumours of the White Whale did in the end incorporate 
with themselves all manner of morbid hints, and half- 
formed foetal suggestions of supernatural agencies, which 
eventually invested Moby Dick with new terrors unbor- 
rowed from anything that visibly appears. So that in 
many cases such a panic did he finally strike, that few who 
by those rumours, at least, had heard of the White Whale, 
few of those hunters were willing to encounter the perils 
of his jaw. 

But there were still other and more vital practical influ- 
ences at work. Not even at the present day has the origi- 
nal prestige of the Sperm whale, as fearfully distinguished 
from all other species of the leviathan, died out of the 
minds of the whalemen as a body. There are those this 
day among them, who, though intelligent and courageous 
enough in offering battle to the Greenland or Right whale, 
would perhaps — either from professional inexperience, or 
incompetency, or timidity, decline a contest with the Sperm 
Whale ; at any rate, there are plenty of whalemen, espe- 
cially among those whaling nations not sailing under the 
American flag, who have never hostilely encountered the 
Sperm whale, but whose sole knowledge of the leviathan 
is restricted to the ignoble monster primitively pursued in 
the North ; seated on their hatches, these men will hearken 
with a childish fireside interest and awe, to the wild, 
strange tales of Southern whaling. Nor is the pre-eminent 
tremendousness of the great Sperm Whale anywhere more 
feelingly comprehended, than on board of those prows 
which stem them. 

And as if the now tested reality of his might had in 


172 


MOBY LICK. 


former legendary times thrown its shadow before it ; we find 
some hook naturalists— Olassen and Povelson— declaring 
the Sperm Whale not only to be a consternation to every 
other creature in the sea, hut also to be so incredibly fero- 
cious as continually to he athirst for human blood. Nor 
even down to so late a time as Cuvier’s, were these or 
almost similar impressions effaced. For in his Natural 
History, the Baron himself affirms that at sight of the 
Sperm Whale, all fish (sharks included) are “ struck with 
the most lively terrors,” and “ often in the precipitancy of 
their flight dash themselves against the rocks with such 
violence as to cause instantaneous death.” And however 
the general experiences in the fishery may amend such re- 
ports as these ; yet in their full terribleness, even to the 
bloodthirsty item of Povelson, the superstitious belief in 
them is, in some vicissitudes of their vocation, revived in the 
minds of the hunters. 

So that overawed by the rumors and portents concerning 
him, not a few of the fishermen recalled, in reference to 
Moby Dick, the earlier days of the Sperm Whale fishery, 
when it was oftentimes hard to induce long practised Right 
whalemen to embark in the perils of this new and daring 
warfare ; such men protesting that although other leviathans 
might be hopefully pursued, yet to chase and point lance at 
such an apparition as the Sperm Whale was not for mortal 
man. That to attempt it, would be inevitably to he torn 
into a quick eternity. On this head, there are some re- 
markable documents that may he consulted. 

Nevertheless, some there were, who »even in the face of 
these things were ready to give chase to Moby Dick ; and 
a still greater number who, chancing only to hear of him 
distantly and vaguely, without the specific details of any 
certain calamity, and without superstitious accompaniments, 
were sufficiently hardy not to flee from the battle if offered. 

One of the wild suggestions referred to, as at last coming 
to be linked with the White Whale in the minds of the 
superstitiously inclined, was the unearthly conceit that 
Moby Dick was ubiquitous; that he had actually been 
encountered in opposite latitudes at one and the same in- 
stant of time. 

' Nor, credulous as such minds must have been, was this 
conceit altogether without some faint show of superstitious 
probability. For as the secrets of the currents in the seas 
have never yet been divulged, even to the most erudite 


MOBY DICK. 


173 


research ; so the hidden ways of the Sperm Whale when 
beneath the surface remain, in great part, unaccountable 
to his pursuers ; and from time to time have originated the 
most curious and contradictory speculations regarding 
them, especially concerning the mystic modes whereby, 
after sounding to a great depth, he transports himself with 
such vast swiftness to the most widely distant points. 

It is a thing well known to both American and English 
whale-ships, and as well a thing placed upon authoritative 
record years ago by Scoresby, that some whales have been 
captured far north in the Pacific, in whose bodies have been 
found the barbs of harpoons darted in the Greenland seas. 
Nor is it to be gainsaid, that in some of these instances it 
has been declared that the interval of time between the two 
assaults could not have exceeded very many days. Hence, 
by inference, it has been believed by some whalemen, that 
the Nor’ West Passage, so long a problem to man, was never 
a problem to the whale. So that here, in the real living ex- 
perience of living men, the prodigies related in old times of 
the inland Strello mountain in Portugal (near whose top 
there was said to be a lake in which the wrecks of ships 
floated up to the surface) ; and that still more wonderful 
story of the Arethusa fountain near Syracuse (whose waters 
were believed to have come from the Holy Land by an under- 
ground passage) ; these fabulous narrations are almost 
fully equalled by the realities of the whaleman. 

Forced into familiarity, then, with such prodigies as these ; 
and knowing that after repeated, intrepid assaults, the 
White Whale had escaped alive ; it cannot be much matter 
of surprise that some whalemen should go still further in 
their superstitions ; declaring Moby Dick not only ubiqui- 
tous, but immortal (for immortality is but ubiquity in 
time) ; that though groves of spears should be planted in 
his flanks, he would still swim away unharmed ; or if indeed 
he should ever be made to spout thick blood, such a sight 
would be but a ghastly deception ; for again in unensan- 
guined billows hundred of leagues away, his unsullied jet 
would once more be seen. 

But even stripped of these supernatural surmisings, there 
was enough in the earthly make and incontestable character 
of the monster to strike the imagination with unwonted 
power. For, it was not so much his uncommon bulk that 
so much distinguished him from other sperm whales, but, 
as was elsewhere thrown out — a peculiar snow-white wrin- 


174 


MOBY DICK. 


kled forehead, and a high, pyramidical white hump. Tnese 
were his prominent features ; the tokens whereby, even in 
the limitless, uncharted seas, he revealed his identity, at a 
long distance, to those who knew him. 

The rest of his body was so streaked, and spotted, and 
marbled with the same shrouded hue, that, in the end, he 
had gained his distinctive appellation of the White Whale ; 
a name, indeed, literally justified by his vivid aspect, when 
seen gliding at high noon through a dark blue sea, leaving a 
milky- way wake of creamy foam, all spangled with golden 
gleamings. 

Nor was it his unwonted magnitude, nor his remarkable 
hue, nor yet his deformed lower jaw, that so much invested 
the whale with natural terror, as that unexampled, intelli- 
gent malignity which, according to specific accounts, he had 
over and over again evinced in liis assaults. More than all, 
his treacherous retreats struck more of dismay than perhaps 
aught else. For, when swimming before his exulting pur- 
suers, with every apparent symptom of alarm, he had several 
times been known to turn round suddenly, and, bearing 
down upon them, either stave their boats to splinters, or 
drive them back in consternation to their ship. 

Already several fatalities had attended his chase. But 
though similar disasters, however little bruited ashore, 
w^ere by no means unusual in the fishery; yet, in most 
instances, such seemed the White Whqje’s infernal afore- 
thought of ferocity, that every dismembering or death that 
he caused, was not wholly regarded as having been inflicted 
by an unintelligent agent. 

Judge, then, to what pitches of inflamed, distracted fury 
the minds of his more desperate hunters were impelled, 
when amid the chips of chewed boats, and the sinking 
limbs of torn comrades, they swam out of the white curds 
of the whale’s direful wrath into the serene, exasperating 
sunlight, that smiled on, as if at a birth or a bridal. 

His three boats stove around him, and oars and men 
both, whirling in the eddies ; one captain, seizing the line- 
knife from his broken prow, had dashed at the whale, as an 
Arkansas duellist at his foe, blindly seeking with a six inch 
blade to reach the fathom-deep life of the whale. That 
captain was Ahab. And then it was, that suddenly sweep- 
ing his sickle-shaped lower jaw beneath him, Moby Dick 
had reaped away Ahab’s leg, as a mower a blade of 
grass in the field. No turbaned Turk, no hired Venetian 


MOBY DICK. 


175 


or Malay, could have smote him with more seeing malice. 
Small reason was there to doubt, then, that ever since that 
almost fatal encounter, Ahab had cherished a wild vindic- 
tiveness against the whale, all the more fell for that in his 
frantic morbidness he at last came to identify with him, 
not only all his bodily woes, but all his intellectual and 
spiritual exasperations. The White Whale swam before 
him as the monomaniac incarnation of all those malicious 
agencies which some deep men fell eating in them, till they 
are left living on with half a heart and half a lung. That 
intangible malignity which has been from the beginning ; to 
.whose dominion even the modern Christians ascribe one- 
half of the worlds ; which the ancient Ophites of the east 
reverenced in their statue devil ; — Ahab did not fall down 
and worship it like them ; but deliriously transferring its 
idea to the abhorred white whale, he pitted himself, all 
mutilated, against it. All that most maddens and torments ; 
all that stirs up the lees of things ; all truth with malice hi 
it ; all that cracks the sinews and cakes the brain ; all the 
subtle demonisms of life and thought ; all evil, to crazy 
Ahab, were visibly personified, and made practically assail- 
able in Moby Dick. He piled upon the whale’s white hump 
the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole 
race from Adam down ; and then, as if his chest had been 
a mortar, he burst his hot heart’s shell upon it. 

It is not probable that this monomania in him took its 
instant rise at the precise time of his bodily dismemberment. 
Then, in darting at the monster, knife in hand, he had but 
given loose to a sudden, passionate, corporal animosity ; and 
when he received the stroke that tore him, he probably 
but felt the agonising bodily laceration, nothing more. 
Yet, when by this collision forced to turn towards home, 
and for long months of days and weeks, Ahab and anguish 
lay stretched together in one hammock, rounding in mid 
winter that dreary, howling Patagonian Cape; then it 
was, that his torn body and gashed soul bled into one 
another ; and so interfusing, made him mad. That it was 
only then, on the homeward voyage, after the encounter, 
that the final monomania seized him, seems all but certain 
from the fact that, at intervals during the passage, he was 
a raving lunatic ; and, though unlimbed of a leg, yet such 
vital strength yet lurked in his Egyptian chest, and was 
moreover intensified by his delirium, that his mates were 
forced to lace him fast, even there, as he sailed, raving in 


176 


MOBY DICK. 


his hammock. In a strait-jacket, he swung to the mad rock- 
ings of the gales. And, when running into more sufferable 
latitudes, the ship, with mild stun’sails spread, floated 
across the tranquil tropics, and, to all appearances, the old 
man’s delirium seemed left behind him with the Cape Horn 
swells, and he came forth from his dark den into the blessed 
light and air ; even then, when he bore that firm, collected 
front, however pale, and issued his calm orders once again ; 
and his mates thanked God the direful madness was now 
gone; even then, Ahab, in his hidden self, raved on. 
Human madness is oftentimes a cunning and most feline 
thing. When you think it fled, it may have but become 
transfigured into still subtler form. Ahab’s full lunacy 
subsided not, but deepeningly contracted ; like the un- 
abated Hudson, when that noble Northman flows narrowly, 
but unfathomably through the Highland gorge. But, as in 
his narrow-flowing monomania, not one jot of Ahab’s broad 
madness had been left behind ; so in that broad madness, 
not one jot of his great natural intellect had perished. That 
before living agent, now became the living instrument. If 
such a furious trope may stand, his special lunacy stormed 
his general sanity, and carried it, and turned all its con- 
centrated cannon upon its own mad mark ; so that far from 
having lost his strength, Ahab, to that one end, did now 
possess a thousand-fold more potency than ever he had 
sanely brought to bear upon any one reasonable obje'ct. 

This is much ; yet Ahab’s larger, darker, deeper part re- 
mains unhinted. But vain to popularise profundities, and 
all truth is profound. Winding far down from within the 
very heart of this spiked Hotel de Cluny where we here 
stand — however grand and wonderful, now quit it ; — and 
take your way, ye nobler, sadder souls, to those vast Roman 
halls of Thermes ; where far beneath the fantastic towers 
of man’s upper earth, his root of grandeur, his whole awful 
essence sits in bearded state ; an antique buried beneath 
antiquities, and throned on torsoes ! So with a broken 
throne, the great gods mock that captive king ; so like a 
Caryatid, he patient sits, upholding on his frozen brow the 
piled entablatures of ages. Wind ye down there, ye 
prouder, sadder souls! question that proud, sad king! A 
family likeness ! aye, he did beget ye, ye young exiled royal- 
ties ; and from your grim sire only will the old State-secret 
come. 

Now, in his heart, Ahab had some glimpse of this, namel v : 


MOBY DICK . 


177 


all my means are sane, my motive and my object mad. Yet 
without power to kill, or change, or shun the fact ; he like- 
wise knew that to mankind he did long dissemble ; in some 
sort, did still. But that thing of his dissembling was only 
subject to his perceptibility, not to his will determinate. 
Nevertheless, so well did he succeed in that dissembling, 
that when with ivory leg he stepped ashore at last, no Nan- 
tucketer thought him otherwise than but naturally grieved, 
and that to the quick, with the terrible casualty which had 
overtaken him. 

The report of his undeniable delirium at sea was likewise 
popularly ascribed to a kindred cause. And so too, all the 
added moodiness which always afterwards, to the very day 
of sailing in the Pequod on the present voyage, sat brood- 
ing on his brow. Nor is it so very unlikely, that far from 
distrusting his fitness for another whaling voyage, on ac- 
count of such dark symptoms, the calculating people of that 
prudent isle were inclined to harbour the conceit, that for 
those very reasons he was all the better qualified and set 
on edge, for a pursuit so full of rage and wildness as the 
bloody hunt of whales. Gnawed within and scorched with- 
out, with the infixed, unrelenting fangs of some incurable 
idea ; such an one, could he be found, would seem the very 
man to dart his iron and lift his lance against the most ap- 
palling of all brutes. Or, if for any reason thought to be 
corporally incapacitated for that, yet such an one would 
seem superlatively competent to cheer and howl on his 
underlings to the attack. But be all this as it may, cer- 
tain it is, that with the mad secret of his unabated rage 
bolted up and keyed in him, Ahab had purposely sailed 
upon the present voyage with the one only and all-engross- 
ing object of hunting the White Whale. Had any one of 
his old acquaintances on shore but half dreamed of what 
was lurking in him then, how soon would their aghast and 
righteous souls have wrenched the ship from such a fiendish 
man ! They were bent on profitable cruises, the profit to 
be counted down in dollars from the mint. He was intent 
on an audacious, immitigable, and supernatural revenge. 

Here, then, was this grey-headed, ungodly old man, chas- 
ing with curses a Job’s whale round the world, at the head 
of a crew, too, chiefly made up of mongrel renegades, and 
castaways, and cannibals — morally enfeebled also, by the 
incompetence of mere unaided virtue or right-mindedness 
in Starbuck, the invulnerable jollity of indifference and 

12 


178 


MOBY DICK. 


recklessness in Stubb, and the pervading mediocrity in 
Flask. Such a crew, so officered, seemed specially picked 
and packed by some infernal fatality to help him to his 
monomaniac revenge. How it was that they so aboundingly 
responded to the old man’s ire — by what evil magic their 
souls were possessed, that at times his hate seemed almost 
theirs ; the White Whale as much their insufferable foe as 
his ; how all this came to be — what the White Whale was to 
them, or how to their unconscious understandings, also, in 
some dim, unsuspected way, he might have seemed the 
gliding great demon of the seas of life, — all this to explain, 
would be to dive deeper than Ishmael can go. The subter- 
ranean miner that works in us all, how can one tell whither 
leads his shaft by the ever shifting, muffled sound of his 
pick ? Who does not feel the irresistible arm drag ? What 
skiff in tow of a seventy-four can stand still ? For one, I 
gave myself up to the abandonment of the time and the 
place; but while yet all a- rush to encounter the whale, 
could see naught in that brute but the deadliest ill. 


CHAPTER XLII. 

THE WHITENESS OF THE WHALE. 

What the white whale was to Ahab, has been hinted; 
what, at times, he was to me, as yet remains unsaid. 

Aside from those more obvious considerations touching 
Moby Dick, which could not but occasionally awaken in 
any man’s soul some alarm, there was another thought, or 
rather vague, nameless horror concerning him, which at 
times by its intensity completely overpowered all the rest ; 
and yet so mystical and well nigh ineffable was it, that I 
almost despair of putting it in a comprehensible form. It 
was the whiteness of the whale that above all things appalled 
me. But how can I hope to explain myself here ; and yet, 
in some dim, random way, explain myself I must, else all 
these chapters might be naught. 

Though in many natural objects, whiteness refiningly en- 
hances beauty, as if imparting some special virtue of its 
own, as in marbles, japonicas, and pearls; and though 
various nations have in some way recognised a certain royal 
pre-eminence in this hue; even the barbaric, grand old 


MOB Y DICK. 


179 


kings of Pegu placing the title “ Lord of the White Ele- 
phants ” above all their other magniloquent ascriptions of 
dominion; and the modern kings of Siam unfurling the 
same snow-white quadruped in the royal standard ; and the 
Hanoverian flag bearing the one figure of a snow-white 
charger ; and the great Austrian Empire, Caesarian, heir to 
overlording Rome, having for the imperial colour the same 
imperial hue ; and though this pre-eminence in it applies 
to the human race itself, giving the white man ideal master- 
ship over every dusky tribe ; and though, besides all this, 
whiteness has been- even made significant of gladness, for 
among the Romans a white stone marked a joyful day ; and 
though in other mortal sympathies and symbolisings, this 
same hue is made the emblem of many touching, noble things 
— the innocence of brides, the benignity of age; though 
among the Red Men of America the giving of the white belt 
of wampum was the deepest pledge of honour ; though in 
many climes, whiteness typifies the majesty of Justice in 
the ermine of the Judge, and contributes to the daily state 
of kings and queens drawn by milk-white steeds ; though 
even in the higher mysteries of the most august religions it 
has been made the symbol of the divine spotlessness and 
power ; by the Persian fire worshippers, the white forked 
flame being held the holiest on the altar ; and in the Greek 
mythologies, Great Jove himself being made incarnate in a 
snow-white bull; and though to the noble Iroquois, the 
midwinter sacrifice of the sacred White Dog was by far the 
holiest festival of their theology, that spotless, faithful 
creature being held the purest envoy they could send to 
the Great Spirit with the annual tidings of their own fidel- 
ity ; and though directly from the Latin word for white, all 
Christian priests derive the name of one part of their sacred 
vesture, the alb or tunic, worn beneath the cassock ; and 
though among the holy pomps of the Romish faith, white 
is specially employed in the celebration of the Passion of 
our Lord; though in the Vision of St. John, white robes are 
given to the redeemed, and the four-and-twenty elders stand 
clothed in white before the great white throne, and the 
Holy One that sitteth there white like wool ; yet for all 
these accumulated associations, with whatever is sweet, 
and honourable, and sublime, there yet lurks an elusive some- 
thing in the innermost idea of this hue, which strikes more 
of panic to the soul than that redness which affrights in 
blood. 


180 


MOB r DICK. 


This elusive quality it is, which causes the thought of 
whiteness, when divorced from more kindly associations, 
and coupled with any object terrible in itself, to heighten 
that terror to the furthest bounds. Witness the white 
bear of the poles, and the white shark of the tropics ; what 
but their smooth, flaky whiteness makes them the trans- 
cendent horrors they are? That ghastly whiteness it is 
which imparts such an abhorrent mildness, even more loath- 
some than terrific, to the dumb gloating of their aspect. 
So that not the fierce-fanged tiger in his heraldic coat can 
so stagger courage as the white-shrouded bear or shark.* 

Bethink thee of the albatross, whence come those clouds 
of spiritual wonderment and pale dread, in which that white 
phantom sails in all imaginations? Not Coleridge first 
threw that spell ; but God’s great, unflattering laureate, 
Nature.f 

* With reference to the Polar bear, it may possibly be urged by him 
who would fain go still deeper into this matter, that it is not the white- 
ness, separately regarded, which heightens the intolerable hideousness 
of that brute; for, analysed, that heightened hideousness, it might be 
said, only arises from the circumstance, that the irresponsible ferocious- 
ness of the creature stands invested in the fleece of celestial innocence 
and love; and hence, by bringing together two such opposite emotions 
in our minds, the Polar bear frightens us with so unnatural a contrast. 
But even assuming all this to be true; yet, were it not for the whiteness, 
you would not have that intensified terror. 

As for the white shark, the white gliding ghostliness of repose in that 
creature, when beheld in his ordinary moods, strangely tallies with the 
same quality in the Polar quadruped. This peculiarity is most vividly 
hit by the French in the name they bestow upon that fish. The Romish 
mass for the dead begins with “ Requiem eternam ” (eternal rest), 
whence Requiem denominating the mass itself, and any other funereal 
music. Now in allusion to the white, silent stillness of death in this 
shark, and the mild deadliness of his habits, the French call him 
Requin. 

1 1 remember the first albatross I ever saw. It was during a prolonged 
gale, in waters hard upon the Antarctic seas. From my forenoon 
watch below, I ascended to the overclouded deck; and there, dashed upon 
the main hatches, I saw a regal, feathery thing of unspotted whiteness, 
and with a hooked, Roman bill sublime. At intervals, it arched forth 
its vast archangel wings, as if to embrace some holy ark. Wonderous 
flutterings and throbbings shook it. Though bodily unharmed, it 
uttered cries, as some king’s ghost in supernatural distress. Through its 
inexpressible, strange eyes, methouglit I peeped to secrets which took 
hold of God. As Abraham before the angels, I bowed myself; the 
white thing was so white, its wings so wide, and in those for ever exiled 
waters, I had lost the miserable warping memories of traditions and of 
towns. Long I gazed at that prodigy of plumage. I cannot teU, can 
only hint, the things that darted through me then. But at last I awoke; 
and turning, asked a sailor what bird was this. A goney, he replied. 
Goney! I never had heard that name before; is it conceivable that 


MOBY DICK. 


181 


Most famous in our Western annals and Indian traditions 
is that of the White Steed of the Prairies ; a magnificent 
milk-white charger, large-eyed, small-headed, bluff-chested, 
and with the dignity of a thousand monarchs in his lofty, 
overscorning carriage. He was the elected Xerxes of vast 
herds of wild horses, whose pastures in those days were 
only fenced by the Rocky Mountains and the Alleghanies. 
At their flaming head he westward trooped it like that 
chosen star which every evening leads on the hosts of light. 
The flashing cascade of his mane, the curving comet of his 
tail, invested him with housings more resplendent than 
gold and silver-beaters could have furnished him. A most 
imperial and archangelical apparition of that unfallen, 
western world, which to the eyes of the old trappers and 
hunters revived the glories of those primeval times when 
Adam walked majestic as a god, bluff-browed and fearless 
as this mighty steed. Whether marching amid his aides 
and marshals in the van of countless cohorts that endlessly 
streamed it over the plains, like an Ohio ; or whether with 
his circumambient subjects browsing all around at the 
horizon, the White Steed gallopingly reviewed them with 
warm nostrils reddening through his cool milkiness; in 
whatever aspect he presented him self, always to the bravest 
Indians he was the object of trembling reverence and awe. 
Nor can it be questioned from what stands on legendary 
record of this noble horse, that it was his spiritual whiteness 
chiefly, which so clothed him with divineness ; and that 

this glorious thing is utterly unknown to men ashore! never! But 
sometime after, I learned that goney was some seaman’s name for 
albatross. So that by no possibility could Coleridge’s wild Rhyme have 
had aught to do with those mystical impressions which were mine, 
when I saw that bird upon our deck. For neither had I then read the 
Rhyme, nor knew the bird to be an albatross. Yet, in saving this, I do 
but indirectly burnish a little brighter the noble merit of the poem and 
the poet. 

I assert, then, that in the wonderous bodily whiteness of the bird 
chiefly lurks the secret of the spell ; a truth the more evinced in this, 
that by a solecism of terms there are birds called gray albatrosses; and 
these I have frequently seen, but never with such emotions as when I 
beheld the Antarctic fowl. 

But how had the mystic thing been caught? Whisper it not, and I 
will tell; with a treacherous hook and line, as the fowl floated on the 
sea. At last the Captain made a postman of it ; tying a lettered, leathern 
tally round its neck, with the ship’s time and place; and then letting it 
escape. But I doubt not, that leathern tally, meant for man, was taken 
off in Heaven, when the white fowl flew to join the wing-folding, the 
invoking, and adoring cherubim ! 


182 


MOBY DICK. 


this divineness had that in it which, though commanding 
worship, at the same time enforced a certain nameless 
terror. 

But there are other instances where this whiteness loses 
all that accessory and strange glory which invests it in the 
White Steed and Albatross. 

What is it that in the Albino man so peculiarly repels 
and often shocks the eye, as that sometimes he is loathed 
by his own kith and kin ! It is that whiteness which invests 
him, a thing expressed by the name he bears. The Albino 
is as well made as other men — has no substantive deformity 
— and yet this mere aspect of all-pervading whiteness makes 
him more strangely hideous than the ugliest abortion. Why 
should this be so ? 

Nor, in quite other aspects, does Nature in her least pal- 
pable but not the less malicious agencies, fail to enlist among 
her forces this crowning attribute of the terrible. From its 
snowy aspect, the gauntleted ghost of the Southern Seas 
has been denominated the White Squall. Nor, in some 
historic instances, has the art of human malice omitted so 
potent an auxiliary. How wildly it heightens the effect of 
that passage in Froissart, when, masked in the snowy 
symbol of their faction, the desperate White Hoods of Ghent 
murder their bailiff in the market-place ! 

Nor, in some things, does the common, hereditary experi- 
ence of all mankind fail to bear witness to the supernatural- 
ism of this hue. It cannot well be doubted, that the one 
visible quality in the aspect of the dead which most appals 
the gazer, is the marble pallor lingering there ; as if indeed 
that pallor were much like the badge of consternation in 
the other world, as of mortal trepidation here. And from 
that pallor of the dead, we borrow the expressive hue of 
the shroud in which we wrap them. Nor even in our super- 
stitions do we fail to throw the same snowy mantle round 
our phantoms ; all ghosts rising in a milk-white fog. — Yea, 
while these terrors seize us, let us add, that even the king 
of terrors, when personified by the evangelist, rides on his 
pallid horse. 

Therefore, in his other moods, symbolise whatever grand 
or gracious thing he will by whiteness, no man can deny 
that in its profoundest idealised significance it calls up a 
peculiar apparition of the soul. 

But though without dissent this point be fixed, how is 
mortal man to account for it? To analyse it, would 


MOBY DICK. 


183 


seem impossible. Can we, then, by the citation of some of 
those instances wherein this thing of whiteness — though 
for the time either wholly or in a great part stripped of all 
direct associations calculated to impart to it aught fearful, 
but, nevertheless, is found to exert over us the same sorcery, 
however modified ; — can we thus hope to light upon some 
chance clue to conduct us to the hidden cause we seek ? 

Let us try. But in a matter like this, subtlety appeals 
to subtlety, and without imagination no man can follow 
another into these halls. And though, doubtless, some at 
least of the imaginative impressions about to be presented 
may have been, shared by most men, yet few perhaps were 
entirely conscious of them at the time, and therefore may 
not be able to recall them now. 

Why to the man of untutored ideality, who happens to 
be but loosely acquainted with the peculiar character of 
the day, does the bare mention of Whitsuntide marshal in 
the fancy such long, dreary, speechless processions of slow- 
pacing pilgrims, down-cast and hooded with new-fallen 
snow ? Or, to the unread, unsophisticated Protestant of the 
Middle American States, why does the passing mention of 
a White Friar or a White Nun, evoke such an eyeless statue 
in the soul ? 

Or what is there apart from the traditions of dungeoned 
warriors and kings (which will not wholly account for it) 
that makes the White Tower of London tell so much more 
strongly on the imagination of an untravelled American, 
than those other storied structures, its neighbours — the 
By ward Tower, or even the Bloody ? And those sublimer 
towers, the White Mountains of New Hampshire, whence, 
in peculiar moods, comes that gigantic ghostliness over the 
soul at the bare mention of that name, while the thought 
of Virginia’s Blue Ridge is full of a soft, dewy, distant 
dreaminess ? Or why, irrespective of all latitudes and long- 
itudes, does the name of the White Sea exert such a spec- 
tralness over the fancy, while that of the Yellow Sea lulls 
us with mortal thoughts of long lacquered mild afternoons 
on the waves, followed by the gaudiest and yet sleepiest of 
sunsets? Or, to choose a wholly unsubstantial instance, 
purely addressed to the fancy, why, in reading the old fairy 
tales of Central Europe, does “the tall pale man” of the 
Ilartz forest, whose changeless pallor unrustlingly glides 
through the green of the groves — why is this phantom more 
terrible than all the whooping imps of the Blocksburg ? 


184 


MOBY 1)WK. 


Nor is it, altogether, the remembrance of her cathedral- 
toppling earthquakes ; nor the stampedoes of her frantic 
seas ; nor the tearlessness of arid skies that never rain ; nor 
the sight of her wide field of leaning spires, wrenched cope- 
stones, and crosses all adroop (like canted yards of anchored 
fleets) ; and her suburban avenues of house- walls lying over 
upon each other, as a tossed pack of cards ; — it is not these 
things alone which make tearless Lima, the strangest, 
saddest city thou can’st see. For Lima has taken the white 
veil ; and there is a higher horror in this whiteness of her 
woe. Old as Pizarro, this whiteness keeps her ruins for- 
ever new ; admits not the cheerful greenness of complete 
decay ; spreads over her broken ramparts the rigid pallor 
of an apoplexy that fixes its own distortions. 

I know that, to the common apprehension, this phenome- 
non of whiteness is not confessed to be the prime agent in 
exaggerating the terror of objects otherwise terrible ; nor 
to the unimaginative mind is there aught of terror in those 
appearances whose awfulness to another mind almost solely 
consists in this one phenomenon, especially when exhibited 
under any form at all approaching to muteness or univer- 
sality. What I mean by these two statements may per- 
haps be respectively elucidated by the following examples. 

First: The mariner, when drawing nigh the coasts of 
foreign lands, if by night he hear the roar of breakers, 
starts to vigilance, and feels just enough of trepidation to 
sharpen all his faculties; but under precisely similar cir- 
cumstances, let him be called from his hammock to view 
his ship sailing through a midnight sea of milky whiteness 
— as if from encircling headlands shoals of combed white 
bears were swimming round him, then he feels a silent, 
superstitious dread ; the shrouded phantom of the whitened 
waters is horrible to him as a real ghost ; in vain the lead 
assures him he is still off soundings ; heart and helm they 
both go down ; he never rests till blue water is under him 
again. Yet where is the mariner who will tell thee, “ Sir, 
it was not so much the fear of striking hidden rocks, as the 
fear of that hideous whiteness that so stirred me ? ” 

# Second : To the native Indian of Peru, the continual 
sight of the snow-howdahed Andes conveys naught of dread, 
except, perhaps, in the mere fancying of the eternal frosted 
desolateness reigning at such vast altitudes, and the natural 
conceit of what a fearfulness it would be to lose oneself in 
such inhuman solitudes. Much the same is it with the back- 


MOBY DICK. 


185 


woodsman of the W est, who with comparative indifference 
views an unbounded prairie sheeted with driven snow, no 
shadow of tree or twig to break the fixed trance of white- 
ness. Not so the sailor, beholding the scenery of the Ant- 
arctic seas ; where at times, by some infernal trick of leger- 
demain in the powers of frost and air, he, shivering and half 
shipwrecked, instead of rainbows speaking hope and solace 
to liis misery, views what seems a boundless churchyard 
grinning upon him with its lean ice monuments and splin- 
tered crosses. 

But thou sayest, methinks this white-lead chapter about 
whiteness is but a white flag hung out from a craven soul ; 
though surrenderest to a hypo, Ishmael. 

Tell me, why this strong young colt, foaled in some peace- 
ful valley of Vermont, far removed from all beasts of prey 
— why is it that upon the sunniest day, if you but shake a 
fresh buffalo robe behind him, so that he cannot even see 
it, but only smells its wild animal muskiness — why will he 
start, snort, and with bursting eyes paw the ground in 
phrensies of affright? There is no remembrance in him of 
any gorings of wild creatures in his green northern home, 
so that the strange muskiness he smells cannot recall to 
him anything associated with the experience of former 
perils ; for what knows he, this New England colt, of the 
black bisons of distant Oregon ? 

No : but here thou beholdest even in a dumb brute, the 
instinct of the knowledge of the demonism in the world. 
Though thousands of miles from Oregon, still when he 
smells that savage musk, the rending, goring bison herds 
are as present as to the deserted wild foal of the prairies, 
which this instant they may be trampling into dust. 

Thus, then, the muffled rollings of a milky sea ; the bleak 
rustlings of the festooned frosts of mountains ; the desolate 
shif tings of the windrowed snows of prairies ; all these, to 
Ishmael, are as the shaking of that buffalo robe to the 
frightened colt ! 

Though neither knows where lie the nameless things of 
which the mystic sign gives forth such hints ; yet with me, as 
with the colt, somewhere those things must exist. Though 
in many of its aspects this visible world seems formed in 
love, the invisible spheres were formed in fright. 

But not yet have we solved the incantation of this white- 
ness, and learned why it appeals with such power to the 
soul ; and more strange and far more portentous — why, as 




180 


MOBY DICK. 


we have seen, it is at once the most meaning symbol of 
spiritual things, nay, the very veil of the Christian’s Deity ; 
and yet should be as it is, the intensifying agent in things 
the most appalling to mankind. 

Is it that by its indefiniteness it shadows forth the heart- 
less voids and immensities of the universe, and thus stabs 
us from behind with the thought of annihilation, when be- 
holding the white depths of the milky way ? Or is it, that 
as in essence whiteness is not so much a colour as the visi- 
ble absence of colour, and at the same time the concrete of 
all colours ; is it for these reasons that there is such a dumb 
blankness, full of meaning, in a wide landscape of snows — a 
colourless, all-colour of atheism from which we shrink ? And 
when we consider that other theory of the natural philoso- 
phers, that all other earthly hues — every stately or lovely 
emblazoning — the sweet tinges of sunset skies and woods ; 
yea, and the gilded velvets of butterflies, and the butterfly 
cheeks of young girls ; all these are but subtile deceits, not 
actually inherent in substance, but only laid on from with- 
out ; so that all deified Nature absolutely paints like the 
harlot, whose allurements cover nothing but the charnel- 
house within ; and when we proceed further, and consider 
that the mystical cosmetic which produces every one of her 
hues, the great principle of light, forever remains white or 
colourless in itself, and if operating without medium upon 
matter, would touch all objects, even tulips and roses, with 
its own blank tinge — pondering all this, the palsied universe 
lies before us a leper; and like wilful travellers in Lapland, 
who refuse to wear coloured and colouring glasses upon their 
eyes, so the wretched infidel gazes himself blind at the 
monumental white shroud that wraps all the prospect 
around him. And of all these things the Albino whale was 
the symbol. Wonder ye then at the fiery hunt ? 


CHAPTER XLIII. 

HARK ! 

“ Hist ! Did you hear that noise, Cabaco ? ” 

It was the middle- watch ; a fair moonlight ; the seamen 
were standing in a cordon, extending from one of the fresh- 
water butts in the waist, to the scuttle-butt near the taffrail. 


MOBY DICK. 


187 


In lliis manner, they passed the buckets to fill the scuttle- 
butt. Standing, for the most part, on the hallowed precincts 
of the quarter-deck, they were careful not to speak or rustle 
their feet. From hand to hand, the buckets went in the 
deepest silence, only broken by the occasional flap of 
a sail, and the steady hum of the unceasingly advancing 
keel. 

It was in the midst of this repose, that Archy, one of the 
cordon, whose post was near the after-hatches, whispered to 
his neighbour, a Cholo, the words above. 

“ Ilist ! did you hear that noise, Cabaco ? ” 

“ Take the bucket, will ye, Archy ? what noise d’ye 
mean ? ” 

“ There it is again — under the hatches — don’t you hear it 
— a cough — it sounded like a cough.” 

“ Cough be damned ! Pass along that return bucket.” 

“ There again — there it is ! — it sounds like two or three 
sleepers turning over, now ! ” 

“ Caramba ! have done, shipmate, will ye ? It’s the three 
soaked biscuits ye eat for supper turning over inside of ye 
— nothing else. Look to the bucket ! ” 

“ Say what ye will, shipmate ; I’ve sharp ears.” 

“ Aye, you are the chap, ain’t ye, that heard the hum of 
the old Quakeress’s knitting-needles fifty miles at sea from 
Nantucket ; you’re the chap.” 

“ Grin away ; we’ll see what turns up. Hark ye, Cabaco, 
there is somebody down in the after-hold that has not 
yet been seen on deck ; and I suspect our old Mogul knows 
something of it too. I heard Stubb tell Flask, one morn- 
ing watch, that there was something of that sort in the 
wind.” 

“ Tish ! the bucket ! ” 


CHAPTER XLIV. 

THE CHART. 

Had you followed Captain Ahab down into his cabin 
after the squall that took place on the night succeeding 
that wild ratification of his purpose with his crew, you 
would have seen him go to a locker in the transom, and 
bringing out a large wrinkled roll of yellowish sea charts, 


188 


MOBY DICK. 


spread them before him on his screwed-clown table. Then 
seating himself before it, you would have seen him intently 
study the various lines and shadings which there met his 
eye; and with slow but steady pencil trace additional 
courses over spaces that before were blank. At intervals, 
he would refer to piles of old log-books beside him, 
wherein were set down the seasons and places in which, on 
various former voyages of various ships, sperm whales had 
been captured or seen. 

While thus employed, the heavy pewter lamp suspended 
in chains over his head, continually rocked with the motion 
of the ship, and for ever threw shifting gleams and shadows 
of lines upon his wrinkled brow, till it almost seemed that 
while he himself was marking outlines and courses on the 
wrinkled charts, some invisible pencil was also tracing lines 
and courses upon the deeply marked chart of his forehead. 

But it was not this night in particular that, in the soli- 
tude of his cabin, Ahab thus pondered over his charts. 
Almost every night they were brought out ; almost every 
night some pencil marks were effaced, and others were sub- 
stituted. For with the charts of all four oceans before him, 
Ahab was threading a maze of currents and eddies, with a 
view to the more certain accomplishment of that monomaniac 
thought of his soul. 

Now, to any one not fully acquainted with the ways of 
the leviathans, it might seem an absurdly hopeless task 
thus to seek out one solitary creature in the unhooped oceans 
of this planet. But not so did it seem to Ahab, who knew 
the sets of all tides and currents ; and thereby calculating 
the driftings of the sperm whale’s food ; and, also, calling 
to mind the regular, ascertained seasons for hunting him in 
particular latitudes ; could arrive at reasonable surmises, 
almost approaching to certainties, concerning the timeliest 
day to be upon this or that ground in search of his prey. 

So assured, indeed, is the fact concerning the periodical- 
ness of the sperm whale’s resorting to given waters, that 
many hunters believe that, could he be closely observed and 
studied throughout the world ; were the logs for one voyage 
of the entire whale fleet carefully collated, then the migra- 
tions of the sperm whale would be found to correspond in 
invariability to those of the herring-shoals or the flights of 
swallows. On this hint, attempts have been made to con- 
struct elaborate migratory charts of the sperm whale* 

* Since the above was written, the statement is happily borne out by an 


MOB Y DICK. 


189 


Besides, when making a passage from one feeding-ground 
to another, the sperm whales, guided by some infallible 
instinct — say, rather, secret intelligence from the Deity — 
mostly swim in veins , as they are called ; continuing their 
way along a given ocean-line with such undeviating exacti- 
tude, that no ship ever sailed her course, by any chart, with 
one tithe of such marvellous precision. Though, in these 
cases, the direction taken by any one whale be straight as a 
surveyor’s parallel, and though the line of advance be 
strictly confined to its own unavoidable, straight wake, yet 
the arbitrary vein in which at these times he is said to 
swim, generally embraces some few miles in width (more 
or less, as the vein is presumed to expand or contract) ; but 
never exceeds the visual sweep from the whale-ship’s mast- 
heads, when circumspectly gliding along this magic zone. 
The sum is, that at particular seasons within that breadth 
and along that path, migrating whales may with great con- 
fidence be looked for. 

And hence not only at substantiated times, upon well 
known separate feeding-grounds, could Abab hope to en- 
counter his prey ; but in crossing the widest expanses of 
water between those grounds he could, by his art, so place 
and time himself on his way, as even then not to be wholly 
without prospect of a meeting. 

There was a circumstance which at first sight seemed to 
entangle his delirious but still methodical scheme. But 
not so in the reality, perhaps. Though the gregarious 
sperm whales have their regular seasons for particular 
grounds, yet in general you cannot conclude that the herds 
which haunted such and such a latitude or longitude this 
year, say, will turn out to be identically the same with 
those that were found there the preceding season ; though 
there are peculiar and unquestionable instances where the 
contrary of this has proved true. In general, the same 
remark, only within a less wide limit, applies to the solita- 

official circular, issued by Lieutenant Maury, of the National Observa- 
tory, Washington, April 16th, 1851. By that circular, it appears that 
precisely such a chart is in course of completion ; and portions of it are 
presented in the circular. “ This chart divides the ocean into districts 
of five degrees of latitude by five degrees of longitude ; perpendicularly 
through each of which districts are twelve columns for the twelve months ; 
and horizontally through each of which districts are three lines ; ere 
to show the number of days that have been spent in each month in 
every district, and the two others to show the number of days in which 
whaies, sperm or right, have been seen.” 


190 


MOBY DICK. 


ries and hermits among the matured, aged sperm whales. 
So that though Moby Dick had in a former year been seen, 
for example, on what is called the Seychelle ground in the 
Indian ocean, or Volcano Bay on the Japanese coast; yet 
it did not follow, that were the Pequod to visit either of 
those spots at any subsequent corresponding season, she 
would infallibly encounter him there. So, too, with some 
other feeding grounds, where he had at times revealed 
himself. But all these seemed only his casual stopping- 
places and ocean-inns, so to speak, not his places of pro- 
longed abode. And where Ahab’s chances of accomplish- 
ing his object have hitherto been spoken of, allusion has 
only been made to whatever wayside, antecedent, extra 
prospects were his, ere a particular set time or place were 
attained, when all possibilities would become probabilities, 
and, as Ahab fondly thought, every possibility the next 
thing to a certainty. That particular set time and place 
were conjoined in the one technical phrase — the Season-on- 
the-Line. For there and then, for" several consecutive years, 
Moby Dick had been periodically descried, lingering in 
those waters for awhile, as the sun, in its annual round, 
loiters for a predicted interval in any one sign of the 
Zodiac. There it was, too, that most of the deadly encoun- 
ters with the white whale had taken place ; there the waves 
were storied with his deeds ; there also was that tragic spot 
where the monomaniac old man had found the awful motive 
to his vengeance. But in the cautious comprehensiveness 
and unloitering vigilance with which Ahab threw his brood- 
ing soul into this unfaltering hunt, he would not permit 
himself to rest all his hopes upon the one crowning fact above 
mentioned, however flattering it might be to those hopes ; 
nor in the sleeplessness of his vow could he so tranquilise 
his unquiet heart as to postpone all intervening quest. 

Now, the Pequod had sailed from Nantucket at the very 
beginning of the Season-on-the-Line. No possible en- 
deavour then could enable her commander to make the 
great passage southwards, double Cape Horn, and then run- 
ning down sixty degrees of latitude arrive in the equatorial 
Pacific in time to cruise there. Therefore, he must wait 
for the next ensuing season. Yet the premature hour of 
the Pequod’ s sailing had, perhaps, been correctly selected 
by Ahab, with a view to this very complexion of things. 
Because, an interval of three hundred and sixty-five days 
and nights was before him ; an interval which, instead of 


MOBY DICK. 


191 


impatiently enduring ashore, he would spend in a miscel- 
laneous hunt ; if by chance the White Whale, spending his 
vacation in seas far remote from his periodical feeding- 
grounds, should turn up his wrinkled brow off the Persian 
Gulf, or in the Bengal Bay, or China Seas, or in any other 
waters haunted by his race. So that Monsoons, Pampas, 
Nor’- Westers, Harmattans, Trades; any wind but the Le- 
vanter and Simoom, might blow Moby Dick into the devious 
zig-zag world-circle of the Pequod’s circumnavigating wake. 

But granting all this ; yet, regarded discreetly and coolly, 
seems it not but a mad idea, this ; that in the broad bound- 
less ocean, one solitary whale, even if encountered, should 
be thought capable of individual recognition from his 
hunter, even as a white-bearded Mufti in the thronged 
thoroughfares of Constantinople? Yes. For the peculiar 
snow-white brow of Moby Dick, and his snow-white hump, 
could not but be unmistakable. And have I not tallied 
the whale, Ahab would mutter to himself, as after poring 
over his charts till long after midnight he would throw 
himself back in reveries — tallied him, and shall he escape ? 
His broad fins are bored, and scalloped out like a lost 
sheep’s ear ! And here, his mad mind would run on in a 
breathless race ; till a weariness and faintness of ponder- 
ing came over him ; and in the open air of the deck he 
would seek to recover his strength. Ah, God ! what trances 
of torments does that man endure who is consumed with 
one unachieved revengeful desire. He sleeps with clenched 
hands ; and wakes with his own bloody nails in his palms. 

Often, when forced from his hammock by exhausting and 
intolerably vivid dreams of the night, which, resuming his 
own intense thoughts through the day, carried them on 
amid a clashing of phrensies, and whirled them round and 
round in his blazing brain, till the very throbbing of his 
life-spot became insufferable anguish ; and when, as was 
sometimes the case, these spiritual throes in him heaved 
his being up from its base, and a chasm seemed opening in 
him, from which forked flames and lightnings shot up, and 
accursed fiends beckoned him to leap down among them ; 
when this hell in himself yawned beneath him, a wild cry 
would be heard through the ship ; and with glaring eyes 
Ahab would burst from his state-room, as though escaping 
from a bed that was on fire. Yet these perhaps, instead of 
being the unsuppressable symptoms of some latent weak- 
ness, or fright at his own resolve, were but the plainest 


192 


MOBY DICK. 


tokens of its intensity. For, at such times, Ahab, the 
scheming, unappeasedly steadfast hunter of the white 
whale ; this Ahab that had gone to his hammock, was not 
the agent that so caused him to burst from it in horror 
again. The latter was the eternal, living principle or soul 
in him ; and in sleep, being for the time dissociated from 
the characterising mind, which at other times employed it 
for its outer vehicle or agept, it spontaneously sought es- 
cape from the scorching contiguity of the frantic thing, of 
which, for the time, it was no longer an integral. But as 
the mind does not exist unless leagued with the soul, there- 
fore it must have been that, in Ahab’s case, yielding up all 
his thoughts and fancies to his one supreme purpose ; that 
purpose, by its own sheer inveteracy of will, forced itself 
against gods and devils into a kind of self-assumed, inde- 
pendent being of its own. Nay, could grimly live and burn, 
While the common vitality to which it was conjoined, fled 
horror-stricken from the unbidden and unfathered birth. 
Therefore, the tormented spirit that glared out of bodily 
eyes, when what seemed Ahab rushed from his room, was 
for the time but a vacated thing, a formless somnambulistic 
being, a ray of living light, to be sure, but without an ob- 
ject to colour, and therefore a blankness in itself. God help 
thee, old man, thy thoughts have created a creature in 
thee ; and he whose intense thinking thus makes him a 
Prometheus ; a vulture feeds upon that heart for ever ; that 
vulture the very creature he creates. 


CHAPTER XLV. 

THE AFFIDAVIT. 

So far as what there may be of a narrative in this book ; 
and, indeed, as indirectly touching one or two very inter- 
esting and curious particulars in the habits of sperm whales, 
the foregoing chapter, in its earlier part, is as important a 
one as will be found in this volume; but the leading matter 
of it requires to be still further and more familiarly enlarged 
upon, in order to be adequately understood, and moreover 
to take away any incredulity which a profound ignorance of 
the entire subject may induce in some minds, as to the 
natural verity of the main points of this affair. 


MOBY DICK. 


193 


I care not to perform this part of my task methodically ; 
but shall be content to produce the desired impression by 
separate citations of items, practically or reliably known 
to me as a whaleman ; and from these citations, I take 
it — the conclusion aimed at will naturally follow of itself. 

First : I have personally known three instances where a 
whale, after receiving a harpoon, has effected a complete 
escape ; and, after an interval ( in one instance of three 
years ), has been again struck by the same hand, and slain ; 
when the two irons, both marked by the same private cypher, 
have been taken from the body. In the instance where 
three years intervened between the flinging of the two 
harpoons ; and I think it may have been something more 
than that; the man who darted them happening, in the 
interval, to go in a trading ship on a voyage to Africa, 
went ashore there, joined a discovery party and penetrated 
far into the interior, where he travelled for a period of 
nearly two years, often endangered by serpents, savages, 
tigers, poisonous miasmas, with all the other common 
perils incident to wandering in the heart of unknown regions. 
Meanwhile, the whale he had struck must also have been 
on its travels ; no doubt it had thrice circumnavigated the 
globe, brushing with its flanks all the coasts of Africa ; but 
to no purpose. This man and this whale again came 
together, and the one vanquished the other. I say I, my- 
self, have known three instances similar to this ; that is in 
two of them I saw the whales struck , and, upon the second 
attack, saw the two irons with the respective marks cut in 
them, afterwards taken from the dead fish. In the three- 
year instance, it so fell out that I was in the boat both times, 
first and last, and the last time distinctly recognised a 
peculiar sort of huge mole under the whale's eye, which I 
had observed there three years previous. I say three years, 
but I am pretty sure it was more than that. Here are 
three instances, then, which I personally know the truth 
of ; but I have heard of many other instances from persons 
whose veracity in the matter there is no good ground to im- 
peach. 

Secondly : It is well known in the Sperm Whale Fishery, 
however ignorant the world ashore may be of it, that there 
have been several memorable historical instances where a 
particular whale in the ocean has been at distant times 
and places popularly cognisable. Why such a whale 
became thus marked was not altogether and originally 

13 


194 


MOBY DICK. 


owing to his bodily peculiarities as distinguished from 
other whales; for however peculiar in that respect any 
chance whale may be they soon put an end to his peculiarities 
by killing him, and boiling him down into a peculiarly 
valuable oil. No ; the reason was this : that from the fatal 
experiences of the fishery there hung a terrible prestige 
of perilousness about such a whale as there did about 
Rinaldo Rinaldini, insomuch that most fishermen were 
content to recognise him by merely touching their 
tarpaulins when he would be discovered lounging by them 
on the sea, without seeking to cultivate a more ultimate 
acquaintance. Like some poor devils ashore that happen to 
know an irascible great man, they make distant unobtrusive 
salutations to him in the street, lest if they pursued the 
acquaintance further, they might receive a summary thump 
for their presumption. 

But not only did each of these famous whales enjoy great 
individual celebrity — Nay, you may call it an ocean- wide 
renown ; not only was he famous in life and now is immortal 
in forecastle stories after death, but he was admitted into 
all the rights, privileges, and distinctions of a name ; had 
as much a name indeed as Cambyses or Caesar. Was it not 
so, O Timor Tom ! thou famed leviathan, scarred like an 
iceberg, who so long did’st lurk in the Oriental straits of 
that name, whose spout was oft seen from the palmy beach 
of Ombay? Was it not so, O New Zealand Jack ! thou 
terror of all cruisers that crossed their wakes in the vicinity 
of the Tattoo Land? Was it not so, O Morquan! King 
of Japan, whose lofty jet they say at times assumed 
the semblance of a snow-white cross against the sky ? 
W as it not so, O Don Miguel ! thou Chilian whale, marked 
like an old tortoise with mystic hieroglyphics upon the 
back ! In plain prose, here are four whales as well known 
to the students of Cetacean History as Marius or Sylla to 
the classic scholar. 

But this is not all. New Zealand Tom and Don Miguel, 
after at various times creating great havoc among the boats 
of different vessels, were finally gone in quest of, system- 
atically hunted out, chased and killed by valiant whaling 
captains, who heaved up their anchors with that express 
object as much in view, as in setting out through the Nar- 
ragansett woods, Captain Butler of old had it in his mind 
to capture that notorious murderous savage Annawon, the 
headmost warrior of the Indian King Philip. 


Many dick. 


195 


I do not know where I can find a better place than just 
here, to make mention of one or two other things, which to 
me seem important, as in printed form establishing in all 
respects the reasonableness of the whole story of the White 
Whale, more especially the catastrophe. For this is one of 
those disheartening instances where truth requires full as 
much bolstering as error. So ignorant are most landsmen 
of some of the plainest and most palpable wonders of the 
world, that without some hints touching the plain facts, 
historical and otherwise, of the fishery, they might scout at 
Moby Dick as a monstrous fable, or still worse and more 
detestable, a hideous and intolerable allegory. 

First : Though most men have some vague flitting ideas 
of the general perils of the grand fishery, yet they have 
nothing like a fixed, vivid conception of those perils, and 
the frequency with which they recur. One reason perhaps 
is, that not one in fifty of the actual disasters and deaths 
by casualties in the fishery, ever finds a public record at 
home, however transient and immediately forgotten that 
record. Do you suppose that that poor fellow there, who 
this moment perhaps caught by the whale-line off the coast 
of New Guinea, is being carried down to the bottom of the 
sea by the sounding leviathan — do you suppose that that 
poor fellow’s name will appear in the newspaper obituary 
you will read to-morrow at your breakfast ? No : because 
the mails are very irregular between here and New Guinea. 
In fact, did you ever hear what might be called regular 
news direct or indirect from New Guinea? Yet I tell you 
that upon one particular voyage which I made to the Pa- 
cific, among many others we spoke thirty different ships, 
every one of which had had a death by a whale, some of 
them more than one, and three that had each lost a boat’s 
crew. For God’s sake, be economical with your lamps and 
candles! not a gallon you burn, but at least one drop of 
man’s blood was spilled for it. 

Secondly : People ashore have indeed some indefinite idea 
that a whale is an enormous creature of enormous power ; 
but I have ever found that when narrating to them some 
specific example of this twofold enormousness, they have 
significantly complimented me upon my facetiousness; 
when, I declare upon my soul, I had no more idea of being 
facetious than Moses when he wrote the history of the 
plagues of Egypt. 

But fortunately the special point I here seek can be es- 


190 


MOBY DICK. 


tablished upon testimony entirely independent of my own. 
That point is this : The Sperm Whale is in some cases 
sufficiently powerful, knowing, and judiciously malicious, 
as with direct aforethought to stave in, utterly destroy, and 
sink a large ship ; and what is more, the Sperm Whale has 
done it. 

First : In the year 1820 the ship Essex, Captain Pollard, 
of Nantucket, was cruising in the Pacific Ocean. One day 
she saw spouts, lowered her boats, and gave chase to a 
shoal of sperm whales. Ere long, several of the whales 
were wounded ; when, suddenly, a very large whale escap- 
ing from the boats, issued from the shoal, and bore directly 
down upon the ship. Dashing his forehead against her 
hull, he so stove her in, that in less than “ten minutes” 
she settled down and fell over. Not a surviving plank of 
her has been seen since. After the severest exposure, part 
of the crew reached the land in their boats. Being returned 
home at last, Captain Pollard once more sailed for the 
Pacific in command of another ship, but the gods ship- 
wrecked him again upon unknown rocks and breakers ; for 
the second time his ship was utterly lost, and forthwith 
forswearing the sea, he has never tempted it since. At 
this day Captain Pollard is a resident of Nantucket. I 
have seen Owen Chace, who was chief mate of the Essex 
at the time of the tragedy; I have read his plain and 
faithful narrative ; I have conversed with his son ; and all 
this within a few miles of the scene of the catastrophe.* 

* The following are extracts from Chace’ s narrative: “Every fact 
seemed to warrant me in concluding that it was anything but chance 
which directed his operations ; he made two several attacks upon the 
ship, at a short interval between them, both of which, according to their 
direction, were calculated to do us the most injury, by being made ahead, 
and thereby combining the speed of the two objects for the shock ; to 
effect which the exact manoeuvres which he made were necessary. His 
aspect was most horrible, and such as indicated resentment and fury. 
He came directly from the shoal which we had just before entered, and 
in which we had struck three of his companions, as if fired with revenge 
for their sufferings.” Again: “ At all events, the whole circumstances 
taken together, all happening before my own eyes, and producing, at 
the time, impressions in my mind of decided, calculating mischief, on 
the part of the whale (many of which impressions I cannot now recall), 
induce me to be satisfied that I am correct in my opinion.” 

Here are his reflections some time after quitting the ship, during a 
black night in an open boat, when almost despairing of reaching any 
hospitable shore. “ The dark ocean and swelling waters were nothing; 
the fears of being swallowed up by some dreadful tempest, or dashed 
upon hidden rocks, with all the other ordinary subjects of fearful con- 


MOBY DICK. 


107 


Secondly : The ship Union, also of Nantucket, was in 
the year 1807 totally lost off the Azores by a similar onset, 
but the authentic particulars of this catastrophe I have 
never chanced to encounter, though from the whale hunters 
I have now and then heard casual allusions to it. 

Thirdly : Some eighteen or twenty years ago Commodore 

J , then commanding an American sloop-of-war of the 

first class, happened to be dining with a party of whaling 
captains, on board a Nantucket ship in the harbour of Oahu, 
Sandwich Islands. Conversation turning upon whales, the 
Commodore was pleased to be sceptical touching the amaz- 
ing strength ascribed to them by the professional gentle- 
men present. He peremptorily denied for example, that 
any whale could so smite his stout sloop-of-war as to cause 
her to leak so much as a thimbleful. Very good; but 
there is more coming. Some weeks after, the Commodore 
set sail in this impregnable craft for Valparaiso. But he 
was stopped on the way by a portly sperm whale* that 
begged a few moments’ confidential business witl/i him. 
That business consisted in fetching the Commodore’^ craft 
such a thwack, that with all his pumps going be made 
straight for the nearest port to heave down and repair. I 
am not superstitious, but I consider the Commodore’s inter- 
view with that whale as providential. Was not Saul of 
Tarsus converted from unbelief by a similar fright? I 
tell you, the sperm whale will stand no nonsense. .. 

I will now refer you to Langsdorff’s Voyages for a little 
circumstance in point, peculiarly interesting to the wTiter 
hereof. Langsdorff, you must know by the way, was at- 
tached to the Russian Admiral Krusenstern’s famous Dis- 
covery Expedition in the beginning of the present century. 
Captain Langsdorff thus begins his seventeenth chapter. 

“ By the thirteenth of May our ship was ready to sail, and 
the next day we were out in the open sea, on our way to 
Ochotsh. The weather was very clear and fine, but so 
intolerably cold that we were obliged to keep on our fur 
clothing. For some days we had very little wind; it was 
not till the nineteenth that a brisk gale from the northwest 

templation, seemed scarcely entitled to a moment’s thought; the dismal 
looking wreck, and the horrid aspect and revenge of the whale , wholly 
engrossed my reflections, until day again made its appearance.” 

In another place — p. 45,— he speaks of “ the mysterious and mortal 
attack of the animal” 

******** 


MOBY DICK. 


198 

sprang up. An uncommon large whale, the body of which 
was larger than the ship itself, lay almost at the surface of 
the water, but was not perceived by any one on board till 
the moment when the ship, which was in full sail, was al- 
most upon him, so that it was impossible to prevent its 
striking against him. We were thus placed in the most 
imminent danger, as this gigantic creature, setting up its 
hack, raised the ship three feet at least out of the water. 
The masts reeled, and the sails fell altogether, while we 
who were below all sprang instantly upon the deck, con- 
cluding that we had struck upon some rock ; instead of 
this we saw the monster sailing off with the utmost gravity 
and solemnity. Captain D’Wolf applied immediately to 
the pumps to examine whether or not the vessel had re- 
ceived any damage from the shock, but we found that very 
happily it had escaped entirely uninjured.” 

Now, the Captain D’Wolf here alluded to as command- 
ing the ship in question, is a New Englander, who, after a 
long life of unusual adventures as a sea-captain, this day 
resides in the village of Dorchester near Boston. I have 
the honour of being a nephew of his. I have particularly 
questioned him concerning this passage in Langsdorff . He 
substantiates every word. The ship, however, was by no 
means a large one : a Russian craft built on the Siberian 
coast, and purchased by my uncle after bartering away the 
vessel in which he sailed from home. 

In that up and down manly book of old-fashioned adven- 
ture, so full, too, of honest wonders — the voyage of Lionel 
Wafer, one of ancient Dampier’s old chums — I found a little 
matter set down so like that just quoted from Langsdorff, 
that I cannot forbear inserting it here for a corroborative 
example, if such be needed. 

Lionel, it seems, was on his way to “ John Ferdinando,” as 
he calls the modern Juan Fernandez. “ In our way thither,” 
he says, “ about four o’clock in the morning, when we were 
about one hundred and fifty leagues from the Main of Amer- 
ica, our ship felt a terrible shock, which put our men in 
such consternation that they could hardly tell where they 
were or what to think ; but every one began to prepare for 
death. And, indeed, the shock was so sudden and violent, 
that we took it for granted the ship had struck against a 
rock ; but when the amazement was a little over, we cast 
the lead, and sounded, but found no ground. * * * * 

The suddenness of the shock made the guns leap in their 


MOBY DICK. 


199 


carriages, and several-of the men were shaken out of their 
hammocks. Captain Davis, who lay with his head on a 
gun, was thrown out of his cabin ! ” Lionel then goes on 
to impute the shock to an earthquake, and seems to sub- 
stantiate the imputation by stating that a great earthquake, 
somewhere about that time, did actually do great mischief 
along the Spanish land. But I should not much wonder, 
if, in the darkness of tliat early hour of the morning, the 
shock was after all caused by an unseen whale vertically 
bumping the hull from beneath. 

I might proceed with several more examples, one way or 
another known to me, of the great power and malice at 
times of the sperm whale. In more than one instance, he 
has been known, not only to chase the assailing boats back 
to their ships, but to pursue the ship itself, and long with- 
stand all the lances hurled at him from its decks. The 
English ship Pusil Hall can tell a story on that head ; and, 
as for his strength, let me say, that there have been ex- 
amples where the lines attached to a running sperm whale 
have, in a calm, been transferred to the ship, and secured 
there ; the whale towing her great hull through the water, 
as a horse walks off with a cart. Again, it is very often 
observed that, if the sperm whale, once struck is allowed time 
to rally, he then acts, not so often with blind rage, as with 
wilful, deliberate designs of destruction to his pursuers ; 
nor is it without conveying some eloquent indication of his 
character, that upon being attacked he will frequently open 
his mouth, and retain it in that dread expansion for several 
consecutive minutes. But I must be content with only one 
more and a concluding illustration ; a remarkable and most 
significant one, by which you will not fail to see, that not 
only is the most marvellous event in this book corroborated 
by plain facts of the present day, but that these marvels 
(like all marvels) are mere repetitions of the ages ; so that 
for the millionth time we say amen with Solomon — Verily 
there is nothing new under the sun. 

In the sixth Christian century lived Procopius, a Christian 
magistrate of Constantinople, in the days when Justinian 
was emperor and Belisarius general. As many know, he 
wrote the history of his own times, a work every way of 
uncommon value. By the best authorities, he has always 
been considered a most trustworthy and unexaggerating 
historian, except in some one or two particulars, not at all 
affecting the matter presently to be mentioned. 


200 


MOB Y DICK. 


Now, in this history of his, Procopius mentions that, 
during the term of his prefecture at Constantinople, a great 
sea-monster was captured in the neighbouring Propontis, or 
Sea of Marmora, after having destroyed vessels at intervals 
in those waters for a period of more than fifty years. A 
fact thus set down in substantial history cannot easily be 
gainsaid. Nor is there any reason it should be. Of what 
precise species this sea-monster was, is not mentioned. But 
as he destroyed ships, as well as for other reasons, he must 
have been a whale ; and I am strongly inclined to think a 
sperm whale. And I will tell you why. For a long time I 
fancied that the sperm whale had been always unknown 
in the Mediterranean and the deep waters connected with 
it. Even now I am certain that those seas are not, and per- 
haps never can be, in the present constitution of things, a 
place for his habitual gregarious resort. But further in- 
vestigations have recently proved to me, that in modern 
times there have been isolated instances of the presence of 
the sperm whale in the Mediterranean. I am told, on good 
authority, that on the Barbary coast, a Commodore Davis 
of the British navy found the skeleton of a sperm whale. 
Now as a vessel of war readily passes through the Darda- 
nelles, hence a sperm whale could, by the same route, pass 
out of the Mediterranean into the Propontis. 

In the Propontis, as far as I can learn, none of that pecul- 
iar substance called brit is to be found, the aliment of the 
right whale. But I have every reason to believe that the 
food of the sperm whale — squid or cuttle-fish — lurks at the 
bottom of that sea, because large creatures, but by no means 
the largest of that sort, have been found at its surface. If, 
then, you properly put these statements together, and reason 
upon them a bit, you will clearly perceive that, according 
to all human reasoning, Procopius’s sea-monster, that for 
half a century stove the ships of a Roman Emperor, must 
in all probability have been a sperm whale. 


MOB Y DICK. 


201 


CHAPTER XLYI. 

SURMISES. 

Though, consumed with the hot fire of his purpose, Aliab 
in all his thoughts and actions ever had in view the ultimate 
capture of Moby Dick ; though he seemed ready to sacrifice 
all mortal interests to that one passion ; nevertheless it may 
have been that he was by nature and long habituation far 
too wedded to a fiery whaleman’s ways, altogether to aban- 
don the collateral prosecution of the voyage. Or at least if this 
were otherwise, there were not wanting other motives much 
more influential with him. It would be refining too much, 
perhaps, even considering his monomania, to hint that his 
vindictiveness towards the White Whale might have possibly 
extended itself in some degree to all sperm whales, and that 
the more monsters he slew by so much the more he multi- 
plied the chances that each subsequently encountered whale 
would prove to be the hated one he hunted. But if such 
an hypothesis be indeed exceptionable, there were still ad- 
ditional considerations which, though not so strictly accord- 
ing with the wildness of his ruling passion, yet were by no 
means incapable of swaying him. 

To accomplish his object Ahab must use tools ; and of all 
tools used in the shadow of the moon, men are most apt to 
get out of order. He knew, for example, that however 
magnetic his ascendency in some respects was over Star- 
buck, yet that ascendency did not cover the complete spirit- 
ual man any more than mere corporeal superiority involves 
intellectual mastership ; for to the purely spiritual, the in- 
tellectual but stand in a sort of corporeal relation. Star- 
buck’s body and Starbuck’s coerced will were Aliab’s, so 
long as Ahab kept his magnet at Starbuck’s brain; still he 
knew that for all this the chief mate, in his soul, abhorred 
his captain’s quest, and could he, would joyfully disin- 
tegrate himself from it, or even frustrate it. It might be 
that a long interval would elapse ere the White Whale was 
seen. During that long interval Starbuck would ever be 
apt to fall into open relapse of rebellion against his captain’s 


MOHY DICK. 


202 

leadership, unless some ordinary, prudential, circumstantial 
influences were brought to hear upon him. Not only that, 
but the subtle insanity of Ahab respecting Moby Dick was 
noways more significantly manifested than in his super- 
lative sense and shrewdness in foreseeing that, for the 
present, the hunt should in some way be stripped of that 
strange imaginative impiousness which naturally invested 
it ; that the full terror of the voyage must he kept with- 
drawn into the obscure background (for few men’s courage 
is proof against protracted meditation unrelieved by action) ; 
that when they stood their long night watches, his officers 
and men must have some nearer things to think of than 
Moby Dick. For however eagerly and impetuously the 
savage crew had hailed the announcement of his quest; 
yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and 
unreliable — they live in the varying outer weather, and 
they inhale its fickleness — and when retained for any object 
remote and blank in the pursuit, however promissory of 
life and passion in the end, it is above all things requisite 
that temporary interests and employments should intervene 
and hold them healthily suspended for the final dash. 

Nor was Ahab unmindful of another thing. In times of 
strong emotion mankind disdain all base considerations ; 
but such times are evanescent. The permanent constitu- 
tional condition of the manufactured man, thought Ahab, is 
sordidness. Granting that the White Whale fully incites 
the hearts of this my savage crew, and playing round their 
savageness even breeds a certain generous knight-erran- 
tism in them, still, while for the love of it they give chase 
to Moby Dick, they must also have food for their more 
common, daily appetites. For even the high lifted and 
chivalric Crusaders of old times were not content to tra- 
verse two thousand miles of land to fight for their holy sep- 
ulchre, without committing burglaries, picking pockets, and 
gaining other pious perquisites by the way. Had they 
been strictly held to their one final and romantic object — 
that final and romantic object, too many would have turned 
from in disgust. I will not strip these men, thought Ahab, 
of all hopes of cash— aye, cash. They may scorn cash 
now ; but let some months go by, and no perspective prom- 
ise of it to them, and then this* same quiescent cash all at 
once mutinying in them, this same cash would soon cashier 
Ahab. 

Nor was there wanting still another precautionary motive 


MOB Y DICK. 


203 


more related to Ahab personally. Having impulsively, it 
is probable, and perhaps somewhat prematurely revealed 
the prime but private purpose of the Pequod’s voyage, 
Ahab was now entirely conscious that, in so doing, he had 
indirectly laid himself open to the unanswerable charge of 
usurpation ; and with perfect impunity, both moral ^yid legal, 
his crew if so disposed, and to that end competent, could 
refuse all further obedience to him, and even violently 
wrest from him the command. From even the barely hinted 
imputation of usurpation, and the possible consequences of 
such a suppressed impression gaining ground, Ahab must 
of course have been most anxious to protect himself. That 
protection could only consist in his own predominating 
brain and heart and hand, backed by a heedful, closely 
calculating attention to every minute atmospheric in- 
fluence w^hich it was possible for his crew to be sub- 
jected to. 

For all these reasons then, and others perhaps too analytic 
to be verbally developed here, Ahab plainly saw that he 
must still in a good degree continue true to the natural, 
nominal purpose of the Pequod’s voyage ; observe all custo- 
mary usages ; and not only that, but force himself to evince 
all his well known passionate interest in the general pur- 
suit of his profession. 

Be all this as it may, his voice was now often heard hail- 
ing the three mast-heads and admonishing them to keep a 
bright look-out, and not omit reporting even a porpoise. 
This vigilance was not long without reward. 


CHAPTER XLVII. 

THE MAT-MAKER. 

It was a cloudy, sultry afternoon ; the seamen were lazily 
lounging about the decks, or vacantly gazing over into the 
lead-coloured waters. Queequegand I were mildly employed 
weaving what is called a sword-mat, for an additional 
lashing to our boat. So still and subdued and yet some- 
how preluding was all the scene, and such an incantation of 
reverie lurked in the air, that each silent sailor seemed 
resolved into his own invisible self. 


204 


MOBY DICK. 


I was the attendant or page of Queequeg, while busy at the 
mat. As I kept passing and repassing the filling or woof of 
marline between the long yarns of the warps, using my 
own hand for the shuttle, and as Queequeg, standing side- 
ways, ever and anon slid his heavy oaken sword between 
the threads, and idly looking off upofi the water, carelessly 
and unthinkingly drove home every yarn : I say so strange 
a dreaminess did there then reign all over the ship and all 
over the sea, only broken by the intermitting dull sound of 
the sword, that it seemed as if this were the Loom of Time, 
and I myself were a shuttle mechanically weaving and 
weaving away at the Fates. There lay the fixed threads of 
the warp subject to but one single, ever returning, unchang- 
ing vibration, and that vibration merely enough to admit 
of the crosswise interblending of other threads with its own. 
This warp seemed necessity ; and here, thought I, with my 
own hand I ply my own shuttle and weave my own destiny 
into these unalterable threads. Meantime, Queequeg’s im- 
pulsive, indifferent sword, sometimes hitting the woof slant- 
ingly, or crookedly, or strongly or weakly, as the case might 
be; and by this difference in the concluding blow producing a 
corresponding contrast in the final aspect of tbe completed 
fabric ; this savage’s sword, thought I, which thus finally 
shapes and fashions both warp and woof ; this easy indifferent 
sword must be chance — aye, chance, free-will, and necessity — 
nowise incompatible — all interweavingly working together. 
The straight warp of necessity, not to be swerved from 
its ultimate course — its every alternating vibration, indeed, 
only tending to that ; free-will still free to ply her shuttle 
between given threads ; and chance, though restrained in 
its play within the right lines of necessity, and sideways 
in its motions directed by free-will, though thus prescribed 
to by both, chance by turns rules either, and has the last 
featuring blow at events. 

****** 

Thus we were weaving and weaving away when I started 
at a sound so strange, long drawn, and musically wild and 
unearthly, that the ball of free-will dropped from my hand, 
and I stood gazing up at the clouds whence that voice 
dropped like a wing. High, aloft in the cross-trees was 
that mad Gay- Header, Tashtego. His body was reaching 
eagerly forward, his hand stretched out like a wand, and at 
brief sudden intervals he continued his cries. To be sure 
the same sound was that very moment perhaps being heard 


MOB Y DICK. 


205 


all over the seas, from hundreds of whalemen’s look-outs 
perched as high in the air ; hut from few of those lungs 
could that accustomed old cry have derived such a marvel- 
lous cadence as from Tashtego the Indian’s. 

As he stood hovering over you half suspended in air, so 
wildly and eagerly peering towards the horizon, you would 
have thought him some prophet or seer beholding the shad- 
ows of Fate, and by those wild cries announcing their coming. 

“ There she blows ! there ! there ! there ! she blows ! she 
blows ! ” 

“ Where-away ? ” 

“ On the lee-beam, about two miles off ! a school of 
them ! ” 

Instantly all was commotion. 

The sperm whale blows as a clock ticks, with the same 
undeviating and reliable uniformity. And thereby whale- 
men distinguish this fish from other tribes of his genus. 

“ There go flukes ! ” was now the cry from Tashtego ; and 
the whales disappeared. 

“ Quick, steward ! ” cried Ahab. “ Time ! time ! ” 

Dough-Boy hurried below, glanced at the watch, and re- 
ported the exact minute to Ahab. 

The ship was now kept away from the wind, and she 
went gently rolling before it. Tashtego reporting that the 
whales had gone down heading to leeward, we confidently 
looked to see them again directly in advance of our bows. 
For that singular craft at times evinced by the sperm 
whale when, somiding with his head in one direction, he 
nevertheless, while concealed beneath the surface, mills 
round, and swiftly swims off in the opposite cpiarter — this 
deceitfulness of his could not now be in action ; for there 
was no reason to suppose that the fish seen by Tashtego 
had been in any way alarmed, or indeed knew at all of our 
vicinity. One of the men selected for shipkeepers — that is, 
those not appointed to the boats, by this time relieved the 
Indian at the main-mast head. The sailors at the fore and 
mizzen had come down ; the line tubs were fixed in their 
places; the cranes were thrust out; the mainyard was 
backed, and the three boats swung over the sea like three 
samphire baskets over high cliffs. Outside of the bulwarks 
their eager crews with one hand clung to the rail, while 
one foot was expectantly poised on the gunwale. So look 
the long line of man-of-war’s men about to throw them- 
selves on board an enemy’s ship. 


206 


MOBY DICK. 


But at this critical instant a sudden exclamation was 
heard that took every eye from the whale. With a start 
all glared at dark Aliab, who was surrounded by five 
dusky phantoms that seemed fresh formed out of air. 


CHAPTER XL VIII. 

THE FIRST LOWERING. 

The phantoms, for so they then seemed, were flitting on 
the otlier side of the deck, and, with a noiseless celerity, were 
casting loose the tackles and bands of the boat which 
swung there. This boat had always been deemed one of 
the spare boats, though technically called the captain’s, on 
account of its hanging from the starboard quarter. The 
figure that now stood by its bows was tall and swart, with 
one white tooth evilly protruding from its steel-like lips. 
A rumpled Chinese jacket of black cotton funereally in- 
vested him, with wide black trowsers of the same dark stuff. 
But strangely crowning this ebonness was a glistening 
white plaited turban, the living hair braided and coiled 
round and round upon his head. Less swart in aspect, the 
companions of this figure were of that vivid, tiger-yellow 
complexion peculiar to some of the aboriginal natives of 
the Manillas ; — a race notorious for a certain diabolism of 
subtilty, and by some honest white mariners supposed to 
be the paid spies and secret confidential agents on the 
water of the devil, their lord, whose counting-room they 
suppose to be elsewhere. 

While yet the wondering ship’s company were gazing 
upon these strangers, Aliab cried out to the white-turbaned 
old man at their head, “ All ready there, Fedallah ? ” 

“ Ready,” was the half-hissed reply. 

“Lower away then; d’ye hear?” shouting across the 
deck. “ Lower away there, I say.” 

Such was the thunder of his voice, that spite of their 
amazement the men sprang over the rail ; the sheaves 
whirled round in the blocks; with a wallow, the three 
boats dropped into the sea ; while, with a dexterous, off- 
handed daring, unknown in any other vocation, the sailors, 


MOB Y DICK . 207 

goat-like, leaped down the rolling ship’s side into the 
tossed boats below. 

Hardly had they pulled out from under the ship’s lee, 
when a fourth keel, coming from the windward side pulled 
round under the stern, and showed the five strangers row- 
ing Ahab, who standing erect in the stern, loudly hailed 
Starbuck, Stubb, and Flask, to spread themselves widely, 
so as to cover a large expanse of water. But with all their 
eyes again riveted upon the swart Fedallah and his crew, 
the inmates of the other boats obeyed not the command. 

“ Captain Ahab ? — ” said Starbuck. 

“ Spread yourselves,” cried Ahab ; “ give way, all four 
boats. Thou, Flask pull out more to leeward ! ” 

“ Aye, aye, sir,” cheerily cried little King- Post, sweeping 
round his great steering oar. “ Lay back ! ” addressing his 
crew. “There! — there! — there again! There she blows 
right ahead, boys ! — lay back ! ” 

“ Never heed yonder yellow boys, Archy.” 

“ Oh, I don’t mind ’em, sir,” said Archy ; “ I knew it all 
before now. Didn’t I hear ’em in the hold? And didn’t 
I tell Cabaco here of it? What say ye, Cabaco? They 
are stowaways, Mr. Flask.” 

“ Pull, pull, my fine hearts-alive ; pull, my children ; pull 
my little ones,” drawlingly and soothingly sighed Stubb to 
his crew, some of whom still showed signs of uneasiness. 
“ Why don’t you break your backbones, my boys ? What 
is it you stare at ? Those chaps in yonder boat ? Tut ! 
They are only five more hands come to help us — never 
mind from where — the more the merrier. Pull, then, do 
pull : never mind the brimstone — devils are good fellows 
enough. So, so ; there you are now ; that’s the stroke for a 
thousand pounds ; that’s the stroke to sweep the stakes ! 
Hurrah for the gold cup of sperm oil, my heroes ! Three 
cheers, men — all hearts alive ! Easy, easy ; don’t be in a 
hurry — don’t be in a hurry. Why don’t you snap your oars, 
you rascals ? Bite something, you dogs ! So, so, so, then ; 
— softly, softly! That’s it — that’s it! long and strong. 
Give way there, give way ! The devil fetch ye, ye raga- 
muffin rapscallions ; ye are all asleep. Stop snoring, ye 
sleepers, and pull. Pull, will ye? pull can’t ye? pull, 
won’t ye ? Why in the name of gudgeons and ginger-cakes 
don’t ye pull ? — pull and break something ! pull, and start 
your eyes out ! Here ! ” whipping out the sharp knife 
from his girdle ; “ every mother’s son of ye draw his knife, 


208 


MOBY DICK. 


and pull with the blade between his teeth. That’s it — that’s 
it. Now ye do something ; that looks like it, my steel-bits. 
Start her— start her, my silver-spoons ! Start her, marl- 
ing-spikes ! ” 

Stubb’s exordium to his crew is given here at large, be- 
cause he had rather a peculiar way of talking to them in 
general, and especially In inculcating the religion of row- 
ing. But you must not suppose from this specimen of his 
sermonisings that he ever flew into downright passions 
with his congregation. Not at all ; and therein consisted 
his chief peculiarity. He would say the most terrific things 
to his crew, in a tone so strangely compounded of fun and 
fury, and the fury seemed so calculated merely as a spice 
to the fun, that no oarsman could hear such queer invoca- 
tions without pulling for dear life, and yet pulling for the 
mere joke of the thing. Besides he all the time looked so 
easy and indolent himself, so loungingly managed his steer- 
ing oar, and so broadly gaped — open-mouthed at times — 
that the mere sight of such a yawning commander, by sheer 
force of contrast, acted like a charm upon the crew. Then 
again, Stubb was one of those odd sort of humourists, whose 
jollity is sometimes so curiously ambiguous, as to put all 
inferiors on their guard in the matter of obeying them. 

In obedience to a sign from Ahab, Starbuck was now pull- 
ing obliquely across Stubb’s bow ; and when for a minute 
or so the two boats were pretty near to each other, Stubb 
hailed the mate. 

“ Mr. Starbuck ! larboard boat there, ahoy ! a word with 
ye, sir, if ye please ! ” 

“ Halloa ! ” returned Starbuck, turning round not a single 
inch as he spoke ; still earnestly but whisperingly urging 
his crew ; his face set like a flint from Stubb’s. 

“ What think ye of those yellow boys, sir ? ” 

“ Smuggled on board, somehow, before the ship sailed. 
(Strong, strong, boys ! ”) in a whisper to his crew, then speak- 
ing out loud again: “A sad business, Mr. Stubb! (seethe 
her, seethe her, my lads !) but never mind, Mr. Stubb, 
all for the best. Let all your crew pull strong, come what 
will. (Spring, my men, spring!) There’s hogsheads of 
sperm ahead, Mr. Stubb, and that’s what ye came for. 
(Pull, my boys !) Sperm, sperm’s the play ! This at least 
is duty ; duty and profit hand in hand ! ” 

“Aye, aye, I thought as much,” soliloquised Stubb, when 
the boats diverged, “ as soon as I clapt eye on ’em, I thought 


MOBY DICK. 


209 


so. Aye, and that’s what he went into the after-hold for, 
so often, as Dough-Boy long suspected. They were hidden 
down there. The White Whale’s at the bottom of it. 
W ell, well, so he it ! Can’t be helped ! All right ! Give 
way, men ! It ain’t the White Whale to-day ! Give way ! ” 

Now the advent of these outlandish strangers at such a 
critical instant as the lowering of the boat from the deck, 
this had not unreasonably awakened a sort of superstitious 
amazement in some of the ship’s company; but Archy’s 
fancied discovery having some time previous got abroad 
among them, though indeed not credited then, this had in 
some small measure prepared them for the event. It took 
off the extreme edge of their wonder ; and so what with all 
this and Stubb’s confident way of accounting for their ap- 
pearance, they were for the time freed from superstitious 
surmisings ; though the affair still left abundant room for 
all manner of wild conjectures as to dark Ahab’s precise 
agency in the matter from the beginning. For me, I silently 
recalled the mysterious shadows I had seen creeping on 
board the Pequod during the dim Nantucket dawn, as w~ell 
as the enigmatical h in tings of the unaccountable Elijah. 

Meantime, Ahab, out of hearing of his officers, having 
sided the furthest to windward, was still ranging ahead of 
the other boats ; a circumstance bespeaking how potent a 
crew was pulling him. Those tiger yellow creatures of his 
seemed all steel and whalebone ; like five trip-hammers 
they rose and fell with regular strokes of strength, which 
periodically started the boat along the water like a hori- 
zontal burst boiler.out of a Mississippi steamer. As for F ed- 
allali, who was seen pulling the harpooneer oar, he had 
thrown aside his black jacket, and displayed his naked chest 
with the whole part of his body above the gunwale, clearly 
cut against the alternating depressions of the watery 
horizon ; while at the other end of the boat Ahab, with one 
arm, like a fencer’s thrown half backward into the air, as if 
to counterbalance any tendency to trip ; Ahab was seen stead- 
ily managing his steering oar as in a thousand boat lower- 
ings ere the White Whale had torn him. All at once the 
outstretched arm gave a peculiar motion and then remained 
fixed, wdiile the boat’s five oars were seen simultaneously 
peaked. Boat and crew sat motionless on the sea. Instantly 
the three spread boats in the rear paused on their way. The 
whales had irregularly settled bodily down into the blue, 


210 


MOBY DICK. 


thus giving no distantly discernible token of the movement, 
though from his closer vicinity Ahab had observed it. 

“ Every man look out along his oars ! ” cried Starbuck. 
“ Thou, Queequeg, stand up 1 ” 

Nimbly springing up on the triangular raised box in the 
bow, the savage stood erect there, and with intensely eager 
eyes gazed off towards the spot where the chase had last 
been descried. Likewise upon the extreme stern of the 
boat where it was also triangularly platformed level with 
the gunwale, Starbuck himself was seen coolly and adroitly 
balancing himself to the jerking tossings of his chip of a 
craft, and silently eyeing the vast blue eye of the sea. 

Not very far distant Flask’s boat was also lying breath- 
lessly still ; its commander recklessly standing upon the 
top of the loggerhead, a stout sort of post rooted in the 
keel, and rising some two feet above the level of the stern 
platform. It is used for catching turns with the whale line. 
Its stop is not more spacious than the palm of a man’s 
hand, and standing upon such a base as that, Flask seemed 
perched at the mast-head of some ship which had sunk to 
all but her trucks. But little King-Post was small and 
short, and at the same time little King-Post was full of a 
large and tall ambition, so that this loggerhead stand-point 
of his did by no means satisfy King-Post. 

“ I can’t see three seas off ; tip us up an oar there, and 
let me on to that.” 

Upon this, Daggoo, with either hand upon the gunwale 
to steady his way, swiftly slid aft, and then erecting him- 
self volunteered his lofty shoulders for a pedestal. 

“ Good a mast-head as any, sir. Will you mount?” 

“ That I will and thank ye very much, my fine fellow ; 
only I wish you fifty feet taller.” 

Whereupon planting his feet firmly against two opposite 
planks of the boat, the gigantic negro, stooping a little, 
presented his flat palm to Flask’s foot, and then putting 
Flask’s hand on his hearse-plumed head and bidding him 
spring as he himself should toss, with one dexterous fling 
landed the little man high and dry on his shoulders. And 
here was Flask now* standing, Daggoo with one lifted arm 
furnishing him with a breastband to lean against and 
steady himself by. 

At any time it is a strange sight to the tyro to see w r ith 
what wondrous habitude of unconscious skill the whaleman 
will maintain an erect posture in his boat, even when 


MOBY DICK. 


211 


pitched about by the most riotously perverse and cross- 
running seas. Still more strange to see him giddily perched 
upon the loggerhead itself, under such circumstances. 
But the sight of little Flask mounted upon gigantic Dag- 
goo was yet more curious ; for sustaining himself with a 
cool, indifferent, easy, unthought of, barbaric majesty, the 
noble negro to every roll of the sea harmoniously rolled his 
fine form. On his broad back, flaxen-haired Flask seemed 
a snow-flake. The bearer looked nobler than the rider. 
Though truly vivacious, tumultuous ostentatious little 
Flask would now and then stamp with impatience; but 
not one added heave did he thereby give to the negro’s 
lordly chest. So have I seen Passion and Vanity stamping 
the living magnanimous earth, but the earth did not alter 
her tides and her seasons for that. 

Meanwhile Stubb, the third mate, betrayed no such far- 
gazing solicitudes. The whales might have made one of 
their regular soundings, not a temporary dive from mere 
fright ; and if that were the case, Stubb, as his wont in 
such cases, it seems, was resolved to solace the languishing 
interval with his pipe. He withdrew it from his hatband, 
where he always wore it aslant like a feather. He loaded 
it, and rammed home the loading with his thumb-end ; but 
hardly had he ignited his match across the rough sand- 
paper of his hand, when Tashtego, his harpooneer, whose 
eyes had been setting to windward like two fixed stars, 
suddenly dropped like light from his erect attitude to his 
seat, crying out in a quick phrensy of hurry, “ Down, down 
all, and give way ! — there they are ! ” 

To a landsman, no whale, nor any sign of a herring, 
would have been visible at that moment ; nothing but a 
troubled bit of greenish white water, and thin scattered 
puffs of vapour hovering over it, and suffusingly blowing 
off to leeward, like the confused scud from white rolling 
billows. The air around suddenly vibrated and tingled, 
as it were, like the air over intensely heated plates of 
iron. Beneath this atmospheric waving and curling, 
and partially beneath a thin layer of water, also, the 
whales were swimming. Seen in advance of all the 
other indications, the puffs of vapour they spouted seemed 
their forerunning couriers and detached flying out- 
riders. 

All four boats were now in keen pursuit of that 
one spot of troubled water and air. But it bade fair 


212 


MOBY DICK. 


to outstrip them ; it flew on and on, as a mass of inter- 
blending bubbles borne down a rapid stream from the 
hills. 

“Pull, pull, my good boys,” said Starbuck, in the lowest 
possible but intensest concentrated whisper to his men ; 
while the sharp fixed glance from his eyes darted straight 
ahead of the bow, almost seemed as two visible needles in 
two unerring binnacle compasses. He did not say much 
to his crew, though, nor did his crew say anything to him. 
Only the silence of the boat was at intervals startlingly 
pierced by one of his peculiar whispers, now harsh with 
command, now soft with entreaty. 

How different the loud little King-Post. “ Sing out and 
say something, my hearties. Roar and pull, my thunder- 
bolts ! Beach me, beach me on their black backs, boys ; 
only do that for me, and I’ll sign over to you my Martha’s 
Vineyard plantation, boys ; including wife and children, 
boys. Lay me on — lay me on! 0 Lord, Lord! but I shall 
go stark, staring mad ! See ! see that white water ! ” And 
so shouting, he pulled his hat from his head, and stamped 
up and down on it ; then picking it up, flirted it far 
off upon the sea ; and finally fell to rearing and plung- 
ing in the boat’s stern like a crazed colt from the prairie. 

“ Look at that chap now,” philosophically drawled Stubb, 
who, with his unlighted short pipe, mechanically retained 
between his teeth, at a short distance, followed after — “ He’s 
got fits, that Flask has. Fits ? yes, give him fits — that’s 
the very word — pitch fits into ’em. Merrily, merrily, 
hearts-alive. Pudding for supper, you know merry’s 
the word. Pull, babes — pull, sucklings — pull, all. But 
what the devil are you hurrying about? Softly, softly, 
and steadily, my men. Only pull, and keep pulling; 
nothing more. Crack all your backbones, and bite 
your knives in two — that’s all. Take it easy — why 
don’t ye take it easy, I say, and burst all your livers and 
lungs ! ” 

But what it was that inscrutable Ahab said to that 
tiger yellow crew of his— these were words best omitted 
here ; for you live under the blessed light of the evangelical 
land. Only the infidel sharks in the audacious seas may 
give ear to such words, when, with tornado brow, and eyes 
of red murder, and foam-glued lips, Ahab leaped after his 
prey. 


MOBY DICK. 


213 


Meanwhile, all the boats tore on. The repeated specific 
allusions of Flask to “ that whale,” as he called the fictitious 
monster which he declared to be incessantly tantalising his 
boat’s how with his tail — these allusions of his were at times 
so vivid and life-like, that they wduld cause some one or two 
of his men to snatch a fearful look over the shoulder. But 
this was against all rule ; for the oarsmen must put out their 
eyes, and ram a skewer through their necks ; usage pro- 
nouncing that they must have no organs but ears, and no 
limbs but arms, in these critical moments. 

It was a sight full of quick wonder and awe ! The vast 
swells of the omnipotent sea ; the surging, hollow roar they 
made, as they rolled along the eight gunwales, like gigantic 
bowls in a boundless bowling-green ; the brief suspended 
agony of the boat, as it would tip for an instant on the knife- 
like edge of the sharper waves, that almost seemed threaten- 
ing to cut it in two; the sudden profound dip into the 
watery glens and hollows ; the keen spurrings and goadings 
to gain the top of the opposite hill ; the headlong, sled-like 
slide down its other side ; — all these, with the cries of the 
headsmen and harpooners, and the shuddering gasps of 
the oarsmen, with the wondrous sight of the ivory Pequod 
bearing down upon her boats with outstretched sails, like a 
wild hen after her screaming brood ; all this was thrilling. 

Not the raw recruit, marching from the bosom of his wife 
into the fever heat of his first battle ; not the dead man’s 
ghost encountering the first unknown phantom in the other 
world ; — neither of these can feel stranger and stronger emo- 
tions than that man does, who for the first time finds him- 
self pulling into the charmed, churned circle of the hunted 
sperm whale. 

The dancing white water made by the chase was now be- 
coming more and more visible, owing to the increasing dark- 
ness of the dun cloud-shadows flung upon the sea. The jets 
of vapour no longer blended, but tilted everywhere to right 
and left ; the whales seemed separating their wakes. The 
boats were pulled more apart ; Starbuck giving chase to 
three whales running dead to leeward. Our sail was now 
set, and, with the still rising wind, we rushed along ; the 
boat going with such madness through the water, that the 
lee oars could scarcely be worked rapidly enough to escape 
being torn from the rowlocks. 

Soon we were running through a suffusing wide veil of 
mist ; neither ship nor boat to be seen. 


214 


MOBY DICK. 


“ Give way, men,” whispered Starbuck, drawing still fur- 
ther aft the sheet of his sail : “ there is time to kill a fish yet 
before the squall comes. There’s white water again ! — close 
to ! Spring ! ” 

Soon after, two cries in quick succession on each side of 
us denoted that the other boats had got fast ; but hardly 
were they overheard, when with a lightning-like hurtling 
whisper Starbuck said : “ Stand up ! ” and Queequeg, har- 
poon in hand, sprang to his feet. 

Though notone of the oarsmen was then facing the life and 
death peril so close to them ahead, yet with their eyes on 
the intense countenance of the mate in the stern of the boat, 
they knew that the imminent instant had come ; they heard, 
too, an enormous wallowing sound as of fifty elephants stir- 
ring in their litter. Meanwhile the boat was still booming 
through the mist, the waves curling and hissing around us 
like the erected crests of enraged serpents. 

“ That’s his hump. There , there , give it to him ! ” whis- 
pered Starbuck. 

A short rushing sound leaped out of the boat ; it was the 
darted iron of Queequeg. Then all in one welded commo- 
tion came an invisible push from astern, while forward the 
boat seemed striking on a ledge ; the sail collapsed and ex- 
ploded ; a gush of scalding vapour shot up near by ; some- 
thing rolled and tumbled like an earthquake beneath us. 
The whole crew were half suffocated as they were tossed 
helter-skelter into the white curdling cream of the squall. 
Squall, whale, and harpoon had all blended together ; and 
the whale, merely grazed by the iron, escaped. 

Though completely swamped, the boat was nearly un- 
harmed. Swimming round it we picked up the floating 
oars, and lashing them across the gunwale, tumbled back 
to our places. There we sat up to our knees in the sea, 
the water covering every rib and plank, so that to our 
downward gazing eyes the suspended craft seemed a coral 
boat grown up to us from the bottom of the ocean. 

The wind increased to a howl ; the waves dashed their 
bucklers together; the whole squall roared, forked, and 
crackled around us like a white fire upon the prairie, in 
which, unconsumed, we were burning ; immortal in these 
jaws of death! In vain we hailed the other boats ; as well 
roar to the live coals down the chimney of a flaming fur- 
nace as hail those boats in that storm. Meanwhile the 
driving scud, rack, and mist, grew darker with the shadows 


MOBY DICK. 


215 


of night ; no sign of the ship could be seen. The rising 
sea forbade all attempts to bale out the boat. The oars 
were useless as propellers, performing now the office of 
life-preservers. So, cutting the lashing of the waterproof 
match keg, after many failures Starbuck contrived to ignite 
the lamp in the lantern ; then stretching it on a waif pole, 
handed it to Queequeg as the standard-bearer of this for- 
lorn hope. There, then, he sat, holding up that imbecile 
candle in the heart of that almighty forlornness. There, 
then, he sat, the sign and symbol of a man without faith, 
hopelessly holding up hope in the midst of despair. 

Wet, drenched through, and shivering cold, despairing of 
ship or boat, we lifted up our eyes as the dawn came on. 
The mist still spread over the sea, the empty lantern lay 
crushed in the bottom of the boat. Suddenly Queequeg 
started to his feet, hollowing his hand to his ear. We all 
heard a faint creaking, as of ropes and yards hitherto 
muffled by the storm. The sound came nearer and nearer ; 
the thick mists were dimly parted by a huge, vague form. 
Affrighted, we all sprang into the sea as the ship at last 
loomed into view, bearing right down upon us within 
distance of not much more than its length. 

Floating on the waves we saw the abandoned boat, as for 
one instant it tossed and gaped beneath the ship’s bows 
like a chip at the base of a cataract ; and then the vast 
hull rolled over it, and it was seen no more till it came up 
weltering astern. Again we swam for it, were dashed 
against it by the seas, and were at last taken up and safely 
landed on board. Ere the squall came close to, the other 
boats had cut loose from their fish and returned to the 
ship hi good time. The ship had given us up, but was still 
cruising, if haply it might light upon some token of our 
perishing, — an oar or a lance pole. 


216 


MOBY DICK. 


CHAPTER XLIX. 

THE HYENA. 

There are certain queer times and occasions in this 
strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this 
whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit 
thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that 
the joke is at nobody’s expense but his own. However, 
nothing dispirits, and nothing seems worth while disputing. 
He bolts down all events, all creeds, and beliefs, and per- 
suasions, all hard things visible and invisible, never mind 
how knobby ; as an ostrich of potent digestion gobbles 
down bullets and gun flints. And as for small difficulties 
and worryings, prospects of sudden disaster, peril of life 
and limb ; all these, and death itself, seem to him only 
sly, good-natured hits, and jolly punches in the side 
bestowed by the unseen and unaccountable old joker. 
That odd sort of wayward mood I am speaking of, comes 
over a man only in some time of extreme tribulation ; it 
comes in the very midst of his earnestness, so that what 
just before might have seemed to him a thing most momen- 
tous, now seems hut a part of the general joke. There is 
nothing like the perils of whaling to breed this free and 
easy sort of genial, desperado philosophy ; and with it I 
now regarded this whole voyage of the Pequod, and the 
great White Whale its object. 

“ Queequeg,” said I, when they had dragged me, the last 
man, to the deck, and I was still shaking myself in my 
jacket to fling off the water ; “ Queequeg, my fine friend, 
does this sort of thing often happen?” Without much 
emotion, though soaked through just like me, he gave me 
to understand that such things did often happen. 

“ Mr. Stubb,” said I, turning to that worthy, who but- 
toned up in his oil- jacket, was now calmly smoking his pipe 
in the rain ; “ Mr. Stubb, I think I have heard you say that 
of all whalemen you ever met, our chief mate, Mr. Star- 
buck, is by far the most careful and prudent. I suppose 
then, that going plump on a flying whale with your sail set 


MOBY DICK. 


217 


in a foggy squall is the height of a whaleman’s discretion ? ” 

“ Certain. I’ve lowered for whales from a leaking ship 
in a gale off Cape Horn.” 

“ Mr. Flask,” said I, turning to little King- Post, who was 
standing close by ; “ you are experienced in these things, 
and I am not. Will you tell me whether it is an unalter- 
able law in this fishery, Mr. Flask, for an oarman to break 
his own back pulling himself back-foremost into death’s 
jaws ? ” 

“ Can’t you twist that smaller ? ” said Flask. “ Y es, that’s 
the law. I should like to see a boat’s crew backing water 
up to a whale face foremost. Ha, ha ! the whale would give 
them squint for squint, mind that ! ” 

Here then, from three impartial witnesses, I had a delib- 
erate statement of the entire case. Considering, therefore, 
that squalls and capsizings in the water and consequent 
bivouacks on the deep, were matters of common occurrence 
in this kind of life ; considering that at the superlatively 
critical instant of going on to the whale I must resign my 
life into the hands of him who steered the boat — oftentimes 
a fellow who at that very moment is in his impetuousness 
upon the point of scuttling the craft with his own frantic 
stampings ; considering that the particular disaster to our 
own particular boat was chiefly to be imputed to Starbuck’s 
driving on to his whale almost in the teeth of a squall, 
and considering that Starbuck, notwithstanding, was 
famous for his great heedfulness in the fishery ; considering 
that I belonged to this uncommonly prudent Starbuck’s 
boat ; and finally considering in what a devil’s chase I was 
implicated, touching the White Whale : taking all things 
together, I say, I thought I might as well go below and 
make a rough draft of my will. “ Queequeg,” said I, “ come 
along; you shall be my lawyer, executor, and legatee.” 

It may seem strange that of all men sailors should be 
tinkering at their last wills and testaments, but there are 
no people in the world more fond of that diversion. This 
was the fourth time in my nautical life that I had done the 
same thing. After the ceremony was concluded upon the 
present occasion, I felt all the easier ; a stone was rolled 
away from my heart. Besides, all the days I should now 
live would be as good as the days that Lazarus lived after 
his resurrection ; a supplementary clean gain of so many 
months or weeks as the case might be. I survived myself; 
my death and burial were locked up in my chest. I looked 


218 


MOBY DICK . 


round me tranquilly and contentedly, like a quiet ghost 
with a clean conscience sitting inside the bars of a snug 
family vault. 

Now then, thought I, unconsciously rolling up the sleeves 
of my frock, here goes for a cool, collected dive at death 
and destruction, and the devil fetch the hindmost. 


CHAPTER L. 

ahab’s boat and crew. fed all ah. 

“Who would have thought it, Flask ! ” cried Stubb ; “ if 
I had but one leg you would not catch me in a boat, unless 
maybe to stop the plug-hole with my timber toe. Oh ! he’s 
a wonderful old man ! ” 

“ I don’t think it so strange, after all, on that account,” 
said Flask. “ If his leg were off at the hip, now, it would 
be a different thing. That would disable him ; but he has 
one knee, and good part of the other left, you know.” 

“ I don’t know that, my little man ; I never yet saw him 
kneel.” 


# # # * # # 

Among whale-wise people it has often been argued 
whether, considering the paramount importance of his life 
to the success of the voyage, it is right for a whaling cap- 
tain to jeopardise that life in the active perils of the chase. 
So Tamerlane’s soldiers often argued with tears in their 
eyes, whether that invaluable life of his ought to he carried 
into the thickest of the fight. 

But with Ahab the question assumed a modified aspect. 
Considering that with two legs man is but a hobbling wight 
in all times of danger ; considering that the pursuit of whales 
is always under great and extraordinary difficulties ; that 
every individual moment, indeed, then comprises a peril ; 
under these circumstances is it wise for any maimed man 
to enter a whaleboat in the hunt? Asa general thing, the 
joint-owners of the Pequod must have plainly thought not. 

Ahab well knew that although his friends at home would 
think little of his entering a boat in certain comparatively 


MOBY DICK. 


219 


harmless vicissitudes of the chase, for the sake of being near 
the scene of action and giving his orders in person, yet for 
Captain Ahab to have a boat actually apportioned to him 
as a regular headsman in the hunt — above all for Captain 
Ahab to be supplied with five extra men, as that same boat’s 
crew, he well knew that such generous conceits never entered 
the heads of the owners of the Pequod. Therefore he had 
not solicited a boat’s crew from them, nor had he in any way 
hinted his desires on that head. Nevertheless he had taken 
private measures of his own touching all that matter. Until 
Cabaco’s published discovery, the sailors had little foreseen 
it, though to be sure when, after being a little while out of 
port, all hands had concluded the customary business of 
fitting the whaleboats for service ; when some time after 
this Ahab was now and then found bestirring himself in the 
matter of making thole-pins with his own hands for what 
was thought to be one of the spare boats, and even solicit- 
ously cutting the small wooden skewers, which when the 
line is running out are pinned over the groove in the bow : 
when all this was observed in him, and particularly his so- 
licitude in having an extra coat of sheathing in the bottom 
of the boat, as if to make it better withstand the pointed 
pressure of his ivory limb ; and also the anxiety he evinced 
in exactly shaping the thigh board, or clumsy cleat, as it is 
sometimes called, the horizontal piece in the boat’s bow for 
bracing the knee against in darting or stabbing at the whale ; 
when it was observed how often he stood up in that boat 
with his solitary knee fixed in the semi-circular depression 
in the cleat, and with the carpenter’s chisel gouged out a 
little here and straightened it a little there ; all these things, 
I say, had awakened much interest and curiosity at the time. 
But almost everybody supposed that this particular pre- 
parative heedfulness in Ahab must only be with a view to 
the ultimate chase of Moby Dick ; for he had already re- 
vealed his intention to hunt that mortal monster in person. 
But such a supposition did by no means involve the remotest 
suspicion as to any boat’s crew being assigned to that boat. 

Now, with the subordinate phantoms, what wonder re- 
mained soon waned away ; for in a whaler wonders soon 
wane. Besides, now and then such unaccountable odds and 
ends of strange nations come up from the unknown nooks 
and ash-holes of the earth to man these floating outlaws of 
whalers ; and the ships themselves often pick up such queer 
castaway creatures found tossing about the open sea on 


220 


MOBY DICK. 


planks, bits of wreck, oars, whaleboats, canoes, blown-off 
Japanese junks, and what not; that Beelzebub himself 
might climb up the side and step down into the cabin to 
chat with the captain, and it would not create any unsub- 
duable excitement in the forecastle. 

But be all this as it may, certain it is that while the sub- 
ordinate phantoms soon found their place among the crew, 
though still as it were somehow distinct from them, yet 
that hair-turbaned Fedallah remained a muffled mystery to 
the last. Whence he came in a mannerly world like this, 
by what sort of unaccountable tie he soon evinced himself 
to be linked with Ahab’s peculiar fortunes ; nay, so far 
as to have some sort , of a half-hinted influence; Heaven 
knows, but it might have been even authority over him ; all 
this none knew. But one cannot sustain an indifferent air 
concerning Fedallah. He was such a creature as civilised, 
domestic people in the temperate zone only see in their 
dreams, and that but dimly ; but the like of whom now and 
then glide among the unchanging Asiatic communities, 
especially the Oriental isles to the east of the continent — 
those insulated, immemorial, unalterable countries, which 
even in these modern days still preserve much of the ghostly 
aboriginalness of earth’s primal generations, when the mem- 
ory of the first man was a distinct recollection, and all men 
his descendants, unknowing whence he came, eyed each 
other as real phantoms, and asked of the sun and the moon 
why they were created and to what end ; when though, 
according to Genesis, the angels indeed consorted with the 
daughters of men, the devils also, add the uncanonical Rab- 
bins, indulged in mundane amours. 


CHAPTER LI. 

THE SPIRIT-SPOUT. 

Days, weeks passed, and under easy sail, the ivory 
Pequod had slowly swept across four several cruising- 
grounds ; that off the Azores ; off the Cape de Verdes ; on 
the Plate (so called), being off the mouth of the Rio de la 
Plata ; and the Carrol Ground, an unstaked, watery locality, 
southerly from St. Helena. 


MOBY DICK. 


221 


It was while gliding through these latter waters that one 
serene and moonlight night, when all the waves rolled by 
like scrolls of silver ; and, by their soft, suffusing seethings, 
made what seemed a silvery silence ; not a solitude ; on such 
a silent night a silvery jet was seen far in advance of the 
white bubbles at the bow. Lit up by the moon, it looked 
celestial ; seemed some plumed and glittering god uprising 
from the sea. Fedallah first descried this jet. For of these 
moonlight nights, it was his wont to mount to the main- 
mast head, and stand a look-out there, with the same pre- 
cision as if it had been day. And yet, though herds of 
whales were seen by night, not one whaleman in a hundred 
would venture a lowering for them. You may think with 
what emotions, then, the seamen beheld this old Oriental 
perched aloft at such unusual hours ; his turban and the 
moon, companions in one sky. But when, after spending 
his uniform interval there for several successive nights 
without uttering a single sound ; when, after all this silence, 
his unearthly voice was heard announcing that silvery, 
moonlit jet, every reclining mariner started to his feet as 
if some winged spirit had lighted in the rigging, and hailed 
the mortal crew. “ There she blows ! ” Had the trump of 
judgment blown, they could not have quivered more ; yet 
still they felt no terror ; rather pleasure. For though it 
was a most unwonted hour, yet so impressive was the cry, 
and so deliriously exciting, that almost every soul on board 
instinctively desired a lowering. 

Walking the deck with quick, side-lunging strides, Ahab 
commanded the t’gallant sails and royals to be set, and 
every stunsail spread. The best man in the ship must take 
the helm. Then, with every mast-head manned, the piled- 
up craft rolled down before the wind. The strange, upheav- 
ing, lifting tendency of the taffrail breeze filling the hollows 
of so many sails, made the buoyant, hovering deck to feel 
like air beneath the feet ; while still she rushed along, as if 
two antagonistic influences were struggling in her — one to 
mount direct to heaven, the other to drive yawningly to 
some horizontal goal. And had you watched Ahab’s face that 
night, you would have thought that in him also two differ- 
ent things were warring. While his one live leg made 
lively echoes along the deck, every stroke of his dead limb 
sounded like a coffin-tap. On life and death this old man 
walked. But though the ship so swiftly sped, and though 
from every eye, like arrows, the eager glances shot, yet the 


222 


MOBY DICE. 


silvery jet was no more seen that night. Every sailor swore 
he saw it once, but not a second time. 

This midnight-spout had almost grown a forgotten 
thing, when, some days after, lo! at the same silent hour, it 
was again announced : again it was descried by all ; hut upon 
making sail to overtake it, once more it disappeared as if it 
had never been. And so it served us night after night, till 
no one heeded it hut to wonder at it. Mysteriously jetted 
into the clear moonlight, or starlight, as the case might be ; 
disappearing again for one whole day, or two days or three ; 
and somehow seeming at every distinct repetition to be ad- 
vancing still further and further in our van, this solitary 
jet seemed forever alluring us on. 

Nor with the immemorial superstition of their race, and 
in accordance with the preternaturalness, as it seemed, 
which in many things invested the Pequod, were there 
wanting some of the seamen who swore that whenever and 
wherever descried ; at however remote times, or in however 
far apart latitudes and longitudes, that unnear able spout 
was cast by one self-same whale ; and that whale, Moby 
Dick. For a time, there reigned, too, a sense of peculiar 
dread at this flitting apparition, as if it were treacherously 
beckoning us on and on, in order that the monster might 
turn round upon us, and rend us at last in the remotest 
and most savage seas. 

These temporary apprehensions, so vague hut so awful, 
derived a wondrous potency from the contrasting serenity 
of the weather, in which, beneath all its blue blandness, 
some thought there lurked a devilish charm, as for days 
and days we voyaged along, through seas so wearily, 
lonesomely mild, that all space, in repugnance to our venge- 
ful errand, seemed vacating itself of life before our urn-like 
prow. 

But, at last, when turning to the eastward, the Cape winds 
began howling around us, and we rose and fell upon the 
long, troubled seas that are there ; when the ivory-tusked 
Pequod sharply bowed to the blast, and gored the dark 
waves in her madness, till, like showers of silver chips, the 
foam-flakes flew over her bulwarks ; then all this desolate 
vacuity of life went away, but gave place to sights more 
dismal than before. 

Close to our bows, strange forms in the water darted 
hither and thither before us ; while thick in our rear flew 
the inscrutable sea-ravens. And every morning, perched on 


MOBY DICK. 


223 


our stays, rows of these birds were seen ; and spite of our 
hootings, for a long time obstinately clung to the hemp, as 
though they deemed our ship some drifting, uninhabited 
craft; a thing appointed to desolation, and therefore fit 
roosting-place for their homeless selves. And heaved and 
heaved, still unrestingly heaved the black sea, as if its vast 
tides were a conscience ; and the great mundane soul were 
in anguish and remorse for the long sin and suffering it 
had bred. 

Cape of Good Hope, do they call ye ? Rather Cape Tor- 
mentoto, as called of yore ; for long allured by the perfidious 
silence that before had attended us, we found ourselves 
launched into this tormented sea, where guilty beings trans- 
formed into those fowls and these fish, seemed condemned 
to swim on everlastingly without any haven in store, or 
beat that black air without any horizon. But calm, snow- 
white, and unvarying ; still directing its fountain of feathers 
to the sky ; still beckoning us on from before, the solitary 
jet would at times be descried. 

During all this blackness of the elements, Ahab, though 
assuming for the time the almost continual command of 
the drenched and dangerous deck, manifested the gloomiest 
reserve ; and more seldom than ever addressed his mates. 
In tempestuous times like these, after everything above and 
aloft has been secured, nothing more can be done but pas- 
sively to await the issue of the gale. Then Captain and 
crew become practical fatalists. So, with his ivory leg in- 
serted into its accustomed hole, and with one hand firmly 
grasping a shroud, Ahab for hours and hours would stand 
gazing dead to windward, while an occasional squall of 
sleet or snow would all hut congeal his very eyelashes 
together. Meantime, the crew driven from the forward 
part of the ship by the perilous seas that burstingly broke 
over its bows, stood in a line along the bulwarks in the 
waist ; and the better to guard against the leaping waves, 
each man had slipped himself into a sort of bowline secured 
to the rail, in which he swung as in a loosened belt. Few 
or no words were spoken ; and the silent ship, as if manned 
by painted sailors in wax, day after day tore on through all 
the swift madness and gladness of the demoniac waves. 
By night the same muteness of humanity before the shrieks 
of the ocean prevailed ; still in silence the men swung in 
the bowlines ; still wordless Ahab stood up to the blast. 
Even when wearied nature seemed demanding repose he 


224 


MOBY B1CK. 


would not seek that repose in his hammock. Never could 
Starbuck forget the old man’s aspect, when one night going 
down into the cabin to mark how the barometer stood, he 
saw him with closed eyes sitting straight in his floor- 
screwed chair ; the rain and half -melted sleet of the storm 
from which he had some time before emerged, still slowly 
dripping from the unremoved hat and coat. On the table 
beside him lay unrolled one of those charts of tides and 
currents which have previously been spoken of. His lantern 
swung from his tightly clenched hand. Though the body 
was erect, the head was thrown back so that the closed eyes 
were pointed towards the needle of the tell-tale that swung 
from a beam in the ceiling.* 

Terrible old man ! thought Starbuck with a shudder, 
sleeping in this gale, still thou steadfastly eyest thy pur- 
pose. 


CHAPTER LII. 

THE ALBATROSS. 

South-eastward from the Cape, off the distant Crozetts, 
a good cruising ground for Right Whalemen, a sail loomed 
ahead, the Goney (Albatross) by name. As she slowly 
drew nigh, from my lofty perch at the fore-mast-head, I had 
a good view of that sight so remarkable to a tyro in the far 
ocean fisheries — a whaler at sea, and long absent from 
home. 

As if the waves had been fullers, this craft was bleached 
like the skeleton of a stranded walrus. All down her sides, 
this spectral appearance was traced with long channels of 
reddened rust, while all her spars and her rigging were like 
the thick branches of trees furred over with hoar-frost. 
Only her lower sails were set. A wild sight it was to see 
her long-bearded look-outs at those three mast-heads. They 
seemed clad in the skins of beasts, so torn and bepatched 
the raiment that had survived nearly four years of cruis- 
ing. Standing in iron hoops nailed to the mast, they swayed 

* The cabin-compass is called the tell-tale, because without going to 
the compass at the helm, the Captain, while below, can inform himself 
of the course of the ship. 


MOBY DICK. 


225 


and swung over a fathomless sea ; and though, when the 
ship slowly glided close under our stern, we six men in the 
air came so nigh to each other that we might almost have 
leaped from the mast-heads of one ship to those of the 
other ; yet, those forlorn-looking fishermen, mildly eyeing 
us as they passed, said not one word to our own look-outs, 
while the quarter-deck hail was being heard from below. 

“ Ship ahoy ! Have ye seen the White Whale ? ” 

But as the strange captain, leaning over the pallid bul- 
warks, was in the act of putting his trumpet to his mouth, 
it somehow fell from his hand into the sea ; and the wind 
now rising amain, he in vain strove to make himself heard 
without it. Meantime his ship was still increasing the dis- 
tance between. While in various silent ways the seamen of 
the Pequod were evincing their observance of this ominous 
incident at the first mere mention of the White Whale’s 
name to another ship, Ahab for a moment paused ; it almost 
seemed as though he would have lowered a boat to board 
the stranger, had not the threatening wind forbade. But 
taking advantage of his windward position, he again seized 
his trumpet, and knowing by her aspect that the stranger 
vessel was a Nantucketer and shortly bound home, he 
loudly hailed — “ Ahoy there ! This is the Pequod, bound 
round the world ! Tell them to address all future letters to 
the Pacific ocean ! and this time three years, if I am not at 
home, tell them to address them to ” 

At that moment the two wakes were fairly crossed, and 
instantly, then, in accordance with their singular ways, 
shoals of small harmless fish, that for some days before 
had been placidly swimming by our side, darted away with 
what seemed shuddering fins, and ranged themselves fore 
and aft with the stranger’s flanks. Though in the course 
of his continual voyagings Ahab must often before have 
noticed a similar sight, yet, to any monomaniac man, the 
veriest trifles capriciously carry meanings. 

“ Swim away from me, do ye ?” murmured Ahab, gazing 
over into the water. There seemed but little in the words, 
but the tone conveyed more of deep helpless sadness than 
the insane old man had ever before evinced. But turning 
to the steersman, who thus far had been holding the ship 
in the wind to diminish her headway, he cried out in his 
old lion voice,— “Up helm! Keep her off round the 
world ! ” 

_ Round the world! There is much in that sound to 

15 


226 


MOB Y DICK. 


inspire proud feelings ; but whereto does all that circum- 
navigation conduct ? Only through numberless perils to 
the very point whence we started, where those that we left 
behind secure, were all the time before us. 

Were this world an endless plain, and by sailing eastward 
we could forever reach new distances, and discover sights 
more sweet and strange than any Cyclades or Islands of 
King Solomon, then there were promise in the voyage. 
But in pursuit of those far mysteries we dream of, or in 
tormented chase of that demon phantom that, some time 
or other, swims before all human hearts ; while chasing 
such over this round globe, they either lead us on in barren 
mazes or midway leave us whelmed. 


CHAPTER LIII. 

THE GAM. 

The ostensible reason why Ahab did not go on board of the 
whaler we had spoken was this : the wind and sea betokened 
storms. But even had this not been the case, he would not 
after all, perhaps, have boarded her — judging by his subse- 
quent conduct on similar occasions — if so it had been that, 
by the process of hailing, he had obtained a negative answer 
to the question he put. For, as it eventually turned out, 
he cared not to consort, even for five minutes, with any 
stranger captain, except he could contribute some of that 
information he so absorbingly sought. But all this might 
remain inadequately estimated, were not something said 
here of the peculiar usages of whaling- vessels when meet- 
ing each other in foreign seas, and especially on a common 
cruising-ground. 

If two strangers crossing the Pine Barrens in New York 
State, or the equally desolate Salisbury Plain in England ; 
if casually encountering each other in such inhospitable 
wilds, these twain, for the life of them, cannot well avoid a 
mutual salutation ; and stopping for a moment to inter- 
change the news ; and, perhaps, sitting down for a while 
and resting in concert: then, how much more natural that 
upon the illimitable Pine Barrens and Salisbury Plains of 


MOBY DICK. 


the sea, two whaling vessels descrying each other at the ends 
of the earth — off lone Fanning’s Island, or the far away 
King’s Mills; how much more natural, I say, that under 
such circumstances these ships should not only interchange 
hails, hut come into still closer, more friendly and sociable 
contact. And especially would this seem to be a matter 
of course, in the case of vessels owned in one seaport, and 
whose captains, officers, and not a few of the men are 
personally known to each other ; and consequently, have 
all sorts of dear domestic things to talk about. 

For the long absent ship, the outward-bounder, perhaps, 
has letters on board ; at any rate, she will be sure to let her 
have some papers of a date a year or two later than the last 
one on her blurred and thumb- worn files. And in return 
for that courtesy, the outward-bound ship would receive 
the latest whaling intelligence from the cruising-ground to 
which she may be destined, a thing of the utmost impor- 
tance to her. And in degree, all this will hold true concern- 
ing whaling vessels crossing each other’s track on the cruis- 
ing-ground itself, even though they are equally long absent 
from home. For one of them may have received a transfer 
of letters from some third, and now far remote vessel ; and 
some of those letters may be for the people of the ship she 
now meets. Besides, they would exchange the whaling 
news, and have an agreeable chat. For not only would 
they meet with all the sympathies of sailors, but likewise 
with all the peculiar congenialities arising from a common 
pursuit and mutually shared privations and perils. 

Nor would difference of country make any very essential 
difference ; that is, so long as both parties speak one lan- 
guage, as is the case with Americans and English. Though, 
to be sure, from the small number of English whalers, such 
meetings do not very often occur, and when they do occur 
there is coo apt to be a sort of shyness between them; for 
your Englishman is rather reserved, and your Yankee, he 
does not fancy that sort of thing in anybody but himself. 
Besides, the English whalers sometimes affect a kind of 
metropolitan superiority over the American whalers; re- 
garding the long, lean Nantucketer, with his nondescript, pro- 
vincialisms, as a sort of sea-peasant. But where this superi- 
ority in the English whalemen does really consist, it would 
be hard to say, seeing that the Yankees in one day, collec- 
tively, kill more whales than all the English, collectively, in 
ten, years. But this is a harmless little foible in the English 


MOBY DICK. 


223 

wliale-liunters, which the Nantucketer does not take much to 
heart ; probably, because he knows that he has a few foibles 
himself. 

So, then, we see that of all ships separately sailing the 
sea, the whalers have most reason to be sociable — and they 
are so. Whereas, some merchant ships crossing each 
other’s wake in the mid- Atlantic, will oftentimes pass on 
without so much as a single word of recognition, mutually 
cutting each other on the high seas, like a brace of dandies 
in Broadway ; and all the time indulging, perhaps, in fini- 
cal criticism upon each other’s rig. As for Men-of-W ar, 
when they chance to meet at sea, they first go through such 
a string of silly bowings and scrapings, such a ducking of 
ensigns, that there does not seem to be much right-down 
hearty good-will and brotherly love about it at all. As 
touching slave-ships meeting, why, they are in such a pro- 
digious hurry, they run away from each other as soon as 
possible. And as for Pirates, when they chance to cross 
each other’s cross-bones, the first hail is — “ How many 
skulls?” — the same way that whalers hail — “How many 
barrels ?” And that question once answered, pirates straight- 
way steer apart, for they are infernal villains on both sides, 
and don’t like to see overmuch of each other’s villainous 
likenesses. 

But look at the godly, honest, unostentatious, hospitable, 
sociable, free-and-easy whaler ! What does the whaler do 
when she meets another whaler in any sort of decent weather ? 
She has a “ Gam” a thing so utterly unknown to all other 
ships that they never heard of the name even ; and if by 
chance they should hear of it, they only grin at it, and repeat 
gamesome stuff about “spouters” and “blubber-boilers,” 
and such like pretty exclamations. Why is iz that gall. 
Merchant-seamen, and also all Pirates and Man-of-War’s 
men, and Slave-ship sailors, cherish such a scornful -feeling 
towards Whale-ships ; this is a question it would be hard 
to answer. Because, in the case of pirates, say, I should 
like to know whether that profession of theirs has any 
peculiar glory about it. It sometimes ends inhmcommon 
elevation, indeed; but only at the gallows. And besides, 
when a man is elevated in that odd fashion, he has no 
proper foundation for his superior altitude. Hence, I con- 
clude, that in boasting himself to be high lifted above a 
whaleman, in that assertion the pirate has no solid basis to 
stand on. , 


MOBY DICK. 


229 


But what, is a Gam f You might wear out your index- 
finger running up and down the columns of dictionaries, 
and never find the word. Dr. Johnson never attained to 
that erudition ; N oah W ebster’s ark does not hold it. N e ver- 
theless, this same expressive word has now for many years 
been in constant use among some fifteen thousand true born 
Yankees. Certainly, it needs a definition, and should be 
incorporated into the Lexicon. With that view, let me 
learnedly define it. 

GAM. Noun — A social meeting of two (or more) Whale- 
ships, generally on a cruising -ground / when, after exchang- 
ing hails, they exchange visits by boats ' 9 crews / the two captains 
remaining, for the time, on board of one ship, and the two 
chief mates on the other. 

There is another little item about Gamming which must 
not be forgotten here. All professions have their own little 
peculiarities of detail ; so has the whale fishery. In a pirate, 
man-of-war, or slave ship, when the captain is rowed any- 
where in his boat, he always sits in the stern sheets on a 
comfortable, sometimes cushioned seat there, and often 
steers himself with a pretty little milliner’s tiller decorated 
with gay cords and ribbons. But the whale-boat has no 
seat astern, no sofa of that sort whatever, and no tiller at 
all. High times indeed, if whaling captains were wheeled 
about the water on castors like gouty old aldermen in patent 
chairs. And as for a tiller, the whale-boat never admits of 
any such effeminacy ; and therefore as in gamming a com- 
plete boat’s crew must leave the ship, and hence as the boat 
steerer or harpooner is of the number, that subordinate 
is the steersman upon the occasion, and the captain, having 
no place to sit in, is pulled off to his visit all standing like 
a pine tree. And often you will notice that being conscious 
of the eyes of the whole visible world resting on him from 
the sides of the two ships, this standing captain is all alive 
to the importance of sustaining his dignity by maintaining 
his legs. Nor is this any very easy matter ; for in his rear t 
is the immense projecting steering oar hitting him now 
and then in the small of his back, the after-oar reciprocat- 
ing by wrapping his knees m front. He is thus completely 
wedged before and behind, and can only expand himself 
sideways by settling down on his stretched legs; but a 
sudden, violent pitch of the boat will often go far to topple 
him, because length of foundation is nothing without cor- 
responding breadth. Merely make a spread angle of two 


230 


MOBY DICK. 


poles, and you cannot stand them up. Then, again, it would 
never do in plain sight of the world’s riveted eyes, it would 
never do, I say, for this straddling captain to be seen steady- 
ing himself the slightest particle by catching hold of anything 
with his hands ; indeed, as token of his entire, buoyant self- 
command, he generally carries his hands in his trowsers’ 
pockets ; but perhaps being generally very large, heavy 
hands, he carries them there for ballast. Nevertheless 
there have occurred instances, well authenticated ones too, 
where the captain has been known for an uncommonly 
critical moment or two, in a sudden squall say — to seize 
hold of the nearest oarsman’s hair, and hold on there like 
grim death. 


CHAPTER LIY. 

THE TOWN-HO’S STORY. 

(As told at the Golden Inn.) 

The Cape of Good Hope, and all the watery region 
round about there, is much like some noted four corners 
of a great highway, where you meet more travellers than 
in any other part. 

It was not very long after speaking the Goney that 
another homeward-bound whaleman, the Town-Ho,* was 
encountered. She was manned almost wholly by Poly- 
nesians. In the short gam that ensued she gave us strong 
news of Moby Dick. To some the general interest in the 
White Whale was now wildly heightened by a circum- 
stance of the Town-Ho’s story, which seemed obscurely to 
involve with the whale a certain wondrous, inverted 
visitation of one of those so-called judgments of God which 
at times are said to overtake some men. This latter 
circumstance, with its own particular accompaniments, 
forming what may be called the secret part of the tragedy 
about to be narrated, never reached the ears of Captain 
Ahab or his mates. For that secret part of the story was 



MOBY DICK. 


2TL 

unknown to tlie captain of the Town- Ho himself. It was 
the private property of three confederate white seamen of 
that ship, one of whom, it seems, communicated it to 
Tashtego with Romish injunctions of secrecy, hut the 
following night Tashtego rambled in his sleep, and re- 
vealed so much of it in that way, that when he was 
wakened he could not well withhold the rest. Never- 
theless, so potent an influence did this thing have on those 
seamen in the Pequod who came to the full knowledge of 
it, and by such a strange delicacy, to call it so, were they 
governed in this matter, that they kept the secret among 
themselves so that it never transpired abaft the Pequod’s 
main-mast. Interweaving in its proper place this darker 
thread with the story as publicly narrated on the ship, 
the whole of this strange affair I now proceed to put on 
lasting record. 

For my humour’s sake, I shall preserve the style in 
which I once narrated it at Lima, to a lounging circle of 
my Spanish friends, one saint’s eve, smoking upon the 
thick gilt-tiled piazza of the Golden Inn. Of those fine 
cavaliers, the young Dons, Pedro and Sebastian, were on 
the closer terms with me ; and hence the interluding 
questions they occasionally put, and which are duly 
answered at the time. 

“ Some two years prior to my first learning the events 
which I am about rehearsing to you, gentlemen, the 
Town-Ho, Sperm Whaler of Nantucket, was cruising in 
your Pacific here, not very many days’ sail eastward from 
the eaves of this good Golden Inn. She was somewhere 
to the northward of the Line. One morning upon hand- 
ling the pumps, according to daily usage, it was observed 
that she made more water in her hold than common. 
They supposed a sword-fish had stabbed her, gentlemen. 
But the captain, having some unusual reason for believing 
that rare good luck awaited him in those latitudes ; and 
therefore being very averse to quit them, and the leak not 
being then considered at all dangerous, though, indeed, 
they could not find it after searching the hold as low 
down as was possible in rather heavy weather, the ship 
still continued her cruisings, the mariners working at 
the pumps at wide and easy intervals ; but no good 
luck came ; more days went by, and not only was 
the leak yet undiscovered, but it sensibly increased. Po 
much so, that now taking some alarm, the captain, mak- 


232 


MOBY DICK. 


ing all sail, stood away for the nearest harbour among the 
islands, there to have his hull hove out and repaired. 

“ Though no small passage was before her, yet, if the com- 
monest chance favoured, he did not at all fear that his ship 
would founder by the way, because his pumps were of the 
best, and being periodically relieved at them, those six-and- 
thirty men of his could easily keep the ship free ; never 
mind if the leak should double on her. In truth, well- 
nigh the whole of this passage being attended by very pros- 
perous breezes, the Town-Ho had all but certainly arrived 
in perfect safety at her port without the occurrence of the 
least fatality, had it not been for the brutal overbearing of 
Radney, the mate, a Vineyarder, and the bitterly provoked 
vengeance of Steelkilt, a Lakeman and desperado from 
Buffalo.” 

“ Lakeman ! — Buffalo ! Pray, what is a Lakeman, and 
where is Buffalo ? ” said Don Sebastian, rising in his swing- 
ing mat of grass. 

“ On the eastern shore of our Lake Erie, Don ; but — I 
crave your courtesy — may be, you shall soon hear further 
of all that. Now, gentlemen, in square-sail brigs and three- 
masted ships, well-nigh as large and stout as any that ever 
sailed out of your old Callao to far Manilla ; this Lakeman, 
in the land-locked heart of our America, had yet been 
nurtured by all those agrarian freebooting impressions 
popularly connected with the open ocean. For in their in- 
terflowing aggregate, those grand fresh- water seas of ours, 
— Erie, and Ontario, and Huron, and Superior, and Michi- 
gan, — possess an ocean-like expansiveness, with many of 
the ocean’s noblest traits ; with many of its rimmed varie- 
ties of races and of climes. They contain round archipela- 
goes of romantic isles, even as the Polynesian waters do ; 
in large part, are shored by two great contrasting nations, 
as the Atlantic is ; they furnish long maritime approaches 
to our numerous territorial colonies from the East, dotted 
all round their banks ; here and there are frowned upon by 
batteries, and by the goat-like craggy guns of lofty Mack- 
inaw ; they have heard the fleet thunderings of naval vic- 
tories ; at intervals, they yield their beaches to wild barba- 
rians, whose red painted faces flash from out their peltry 
wigwams ; for leagues and leagues are flanked by ancient 
and unentered forests, where the gaunt pines stand like 
serried lines of kings in Gothic genealogies ; those same 
woods harbouring wild Afric beasts of prey, and silken 


MOBY DICK. 


creatures whose exported furs give robes to Tartar Emper- 
ors ; they mirror the paved capitals of Buffalo and Cleve- 
land, as well as Winnebago villages ; they float alike the 
full-rigged merchant ship, the armed cruiser of the State, 
the steamer, and the beech canoe ; they are swept by Borean 
and dismasting blasts as direful as any that lash the salted 
wave ; they know what shipwrecks are, for out of sight of 
land, however inland, they have drowned full many a mid- 
night ship with all its shrieking crew. Thus, gentlemen, 
though an inlander, Steelkilt was wild-ocean born, and 
wdid-ocean nurtured ; as much of an audacious mariner as 
any. And for Radney, though in his infancy he may have 
laid him down on the lone Nantucket beach, to nurse at his 
maternal sea ; though in after life he had long followed our 
austere Atlantic and your contemplative Pacific ; yet was 
he quite as vengeful and full of social quarrel as the back- 
woods seaman, fresh from the latitudes of buck-horn 
handled bowie-knives. Yet was this Nantucketer a man 
with some good-hearted traits ; and this Lakeman, a 
mariner, who though a sort of devil indeed, might yet by 
inflexible firmness, only tempered by that common decency 
of human recognition which is the meanest slave’s right ; 
thus treated, this Steelkilt had long been retained harmless 
and docile. At all events, he had proved so thus far ; but 
Radney was doomed and made mad, and Steelkilt — but 
gentlemen, you shall hear. 

“ It was not more than a day or two at the furthest after 
pointing her prow for her island haven, that the Town-IIo’s 
leak seemed again increasing, but only so as to require an 
hour or more at the pumps every day. You must know 
that in a settled and civilised ocean like our Atlantic, for 
example, some skippers think little of pumping their whole 
way across it ; though of a still, sleepy night, should the 
officer of the deck happen to forget his duty in that respect, 
the probability would be that he and his shipmates would 
never again remember it, on account of all hands gently sub- 
siding to the bottom. Nor in the solitary and savage seas 
far from you to the westward, gentlemen, is it altogether 
unusual for ships to keep clanging at their pump-handles 
in full chorus even for a voyage of considerable length ; that 
is, if it lie along tolerably accessible coast, or if any other 
reasonable retreat is afforded them. It is only when a leaky 
vessel is in some very out of-the-way part of those waters, 
some really landless latitude, that her captain begins to feel 
a little anxious. 


234 


MOBY DICK. 


“ Much this way hacl it been with the Town-Ho ; so when 
her leak was found gaining once more, there was in truth 
some small concern manifested by several of her company ; 
especially by Radney the mate. He commanded the upper 
sails to be well hoisted, sheeted home anew, and every way 
expanded to the breeze. Now this Radney, I suppose, was 
as little of a coward, and as little inclined to any sort of 
nervous apprehensiveness touching his own person as any 
fearless, unthinking creature on land or on sea that you can 
conveniently imagine, gentlemen. Therefore when he be- 
trayed this solicitude about the safety of the ship, some of 
the seamen declared that it was only on account of his 
being a part owner in her. So when they were working 
that evening at the pumps, there was on this head no small 
gamesomeness slily going on among them, as they stood 
with their feet continually overflowed by the rippling clear 
water; clear as any mountain spring, gentlemen — that 
bubbling from the pumps ran across the deck, and poured 
itself out in steady spouts at the lee scupper-holes. 

“ Now, as you well know, it is not seldom the case in this 
conventional world of ours — watery or otherwise — that 
a person placed in command over his fellow-men finds one 
of them to be very significantly his superior in general pride 
of manhood, straightway against that man he conceives an 
unconquerable dislike and bitterness ; and if he have a 
chance he will pull down and pulverise that subaltern’s 
tower, and make a little heap of dust of it. Be this conceit 
of mine as it may, gentlemen, at all events Steelkilt was a 
tall and noble animal with a head like a Roman, and a flow- 
ing golden beard like the tasseled housings of your last 
viceroy’s snorting charger ; and a brain, and a heart, and a 
soul in him, gentlemen, which had made Steelkilt Charle- 
magne, had he been born son to Charlemagne’s father. But 
Radney, the mate, was ugly as a mule ; yet as hardy, as 
stubborn, as malicious. He did not love Steelkilt, and 
Steelkilt knew it. 

“ Espying the mate drawing near as he was toiling at 
the pump with the rest, the Lakeman affected not to notice 
him, but unawed, went on with his gay banterings. 

“ ‘ Aye, aye, my merry lads, it’s a lively leak this ; hold a 
cannikin, one of ye, and lets have a taste. By the Lord, it’s 
worth bottling ! I’ll tell you what, men, old Rad’s invest- 
ment must go for it ! he had best cut away his part of the 
hull and tow it home. The fact is, boys, that sword-fish 


MOBY DICK. 


235 


only began the job ; he’s come back again with a gang of 
ship-carpenters, saw-fish and file-fisli, and what not ; and 
the Avhole posse of ’em are now hard at work cutting and 
slashing at the bottom ; making improvements, I suppose. 
If old Rad were here now, I’d tell him to jump overboard 
and scatter ’em. They’re playing the devil with his estate, 
I can tell him. But he’s a simple old soul, — Rad, and a 
beauty too. Boys, they say the rest of his property is in- 
vested in looking-glasses. I wonder if he’d give a poor 
devil like me the model of his nose.’ 

“ 4 Damn your eyes ! what’s that pump stopping for ? ’ 
roared Radney, pretending not to have heard the sailors’ 
talk. 4 Thunder away at it ! ’ 

“ 4 Aye, aye, sir,’ said Steelkilt, merry as a cricket. 
4 Lively, boys, lively, now ! 5 And with that the pump 
clanged like fifty fire-engines ; the men tossed their hats 
off to it, and ere long that peculiar gasping of the lungs 
was heard which denotes the fullest tension of life’s utmost 
energies. 

“ Quitting the pump at last, with the rest of his band, the 
Lakeman went forward all panting, and sat himself down 
on the windlass ; his face fiery red, his eyes bloodshot, and 
wiping the profuse sweat from his brow. Now what cozen- 
ing fiend it was, gentlemen, that possessed Radney to meddle 
with such a man in that corporeally exasperated state, I 
know not ; but so it happened. Intolerably striding along 
the deck, the mate commanded him to get a broom and 
sweep down the planks, and also a shovel, and remove 
some offensive matter consequent upon allowing a pig to 
run at large. 

44 Now, gentlemen, sweeping a ship’s deck at sea is a piece 
of household work which in all times but raging gales is 
regularly attended to every evening ; it has been known to 
be done in the case of ships actually foundering at the time. 
Such, gentlemen, is the inflexibility of sea-usages and the 
instinctive love of neatness in seamen; some of whom 
would not willingly drown without first washing their faces. 
But in all vessels this broom business is the prescriptive 
province of the boys, if boys there be aboard. Besides, it 
was the stronger men in the Town-IIo that had been de- 
vided into gangs, taking turns at the pumps ; and being 
the most athletic seaman of them all, Steelkilt had been reg- 
ularly assigned captain of one of the gangs ; consequently 
he should have been freed from any trivial business not 


236 


MOBY DICK. 


connected with truly nautical duties, such being the case 
with his comrades. I mention all these particulars so that 
you may understand exactly how this affair stood between 
the two men. 

“ But there was more than this : the order about the 
shovel was almost as plainly meant to sting and insult 
Steelkilt, as though Radney had spat in his face. Any man 
who has gone sailor in a whale-ship will understand this ; 
and all this and doubtless much more, the Lakeman fully 
comijrehended when the mate uttered his command. But 
as he sat still for a moment, and as he steadfastly looked 
into the mate’s malignant eye and perceived the stacks of 
powder-casks heaped up in him and the slow-match silent- 
ly burning along towards them ; as he instinctively saw all 
this, that strange forbearance and unwillingness to stir up 
the deeper passionateness in any already ireful being — a re- 
pugnance most felt, when felt at all, by really valiant men 
even when aggrieved — this nameless phantom feeling, gen- 
tlemen, stole over Steelkilt. 

“ Therefore, in his ordinary tone, only a little broken by 
the bodily exhaustion he was temporarily in, he answered 
him saying that sweeping the deck was not his business, 
and he would not do it. And then, without at all alluding 
to the shovel, he pointed to three lads as the customary 
sweepers ; who, not being billeted at the pumps, had done 
little or nothing all day. To this, Radney replied with an 
oath, in a most domineering and outrageous manner un- 
conditionally reiterating his command ; meanwhile advanc- 
ing upon the still seated Lakeman, with an uplifted cooper’s 
club hammer which he had snatched from a cask near by. 

“ Heated and irritated as he was by his spasmodic toil at 
the pumps, for all his first nameless feeling of forbearance 
the sweating Steelkilt could but ill brook this bearing in 
the mate ; but somehow still smothering the conflagration 
within him, without speaking he remained doggedly rooted 
to his seat, till at last the incensed Radney shook the ham- 
mer within a few inches of his face, furiously commanding 
him to do his bidding. 

“Steelkilt rose, and slowly retreating round the wind- 
lass, steadily followed by the mate with his menacing ham- 
mer, deliberately repeated his intention not to obey. See- 
ing, however, that his forbearance had not the slightest 
effect, by an awful and unspeakable intimation with his 
twisted hand he warned off the foolish and infatuated man ; 


MOBY DICK. 


237 


but it was to no purpose. And in this way the two went 
once slowly round the windlass ; when, resolved at last no 
longer to retreat, bethinking him that he had now forborne 
as much as comported with his humour, the Lakeman paused 
on the hatches and thus spoke to the officer : 

“ 4 Mr. Radney, I will not obey you. Take that hammer 
away, or look to yourself.’ But the predestinated mate 
coming still closer to him, where the Lakeman stood fixed, 
now shook the heavy hammer within an inch of his teeth ; 
meanwhile repeating a string of insufferable maledictions. 
Retreating not the thousandth part of an inch; stabbing 
him in the eye with the unflinching poniard of his glance, 
Steelkilt, clenching his right hand behind him and creep- 
ingly drawing it back, told his persecutor that if the ham- 
mer but grazed his cheek he (Steelkilt) would murder him. 
But, gentlemen, the fool had been branded for the slaughter 
by the gods. Immediately the hammer touched the cheek ; 
the next instant the lower jaw of the mate was stove in his 
head ; he fell on the hatch spouting blood like a whale. 

“ Ere the cry could go aft Steelkilt was shaking one of 
the backstays leading far aloft to where two of his com- 
rades were standing their mast-heads. They were both 
Canallers. 

“ ‘ Canallers ! ’ cried Don Pedro. ‘We have seen many 
whale-ships in our harbours, but never heard of your 
Canallers. Pardon : who and what are they ? ’ 

“ ‘ Canallers, Don, are the boatmen belonging to our grand 
Erie Canal. You must have heard of it.’ 

“‘Nay, Senor; hereabouts in this dull, warm, most lazy, 
and hereditary land, we know but little of your vigorous 
North.’ 

“ ‘Aye? Well then, Don, refill my cup. Your chicha’s 
very fine ; and ere proceeding further I will tell ye what 
our Canallers are; for such information may throw side- 
light upon my story.’ 

“ For three hundred and sixty miles, gentlemen, through 
the entire breadth of the state of New York; through 
numerous populous cities and most thriving villages; 
through long, dismal, uninhabited swamps, and affluent, cul- 
tivated fields, unrivalled for fertility; by billiard-room and 
bar-room; through the holy-of-holies of great forests; on 
Roman arches over Indian rivers ; through sun and shade ; 
by happy hearts or broken ; through all the wide contrast- 
ing scenery of those noble Mohawk counties; and espe- 


MOBY DICK . 


238 

chilly, by rows of snow-white chapels, whose spires stand al- 
most like milestones, flows one continual stream of Vene- 
tianlv corrupt and often lawless life. There’s your true 
Ashantee, gentlemen ; there howl your pagans ; where you 
ever find them, next door to you ; under the long-flung 
shadow, and the snug patronising lee of churches. For by 
some curious fatality, as it is often noted of your metropol- 
itan freebooters that they ever encamp around the halls 
of justice, so sinners, gentlemen, most abound in holiest 
vicinities. 

“ 4 Is that a friar passing ? ’ said Don Pedro, looking 
downwards into the crowded piazza, with humourous con- 
cern. 

“ 4 Well for our northern friend, Dame Isabella’s Inquisi- 
tion wanes in Lima,’ laughed Don Sebastian. ‘ Proceed, 
Senor.’ 

44 4 A moment ! Pardon ! ’ cried another of the company. 
4 In the name of all us Limees, I but desire to express to 
you, sir sailor, that we have by no means overlooked your 
delicacy in not substituting present Lima for distant Ven- 
ice in your corrupt comparison. Oh ! do not bow and look 
surprised; you know the proverb all along this coast — 
“ Corrupt as Lima.” It but bears out your saying, too ; 
churches more plentiful than billiard- tables, and forever 
open — and “Corrupt as Lima.” So, too, Venice; I have 
been there; the holy city of the blessed evangelist, St. 
Mark! — St. Dominic, purge it! Your cup! Thanks: here 
I refill ; now, you pour out again.’ 

44 Freely depicted in his own vocation, gentlemen, the Ca- 
naller would make a fine dramatic hero, so abundantly and 
picturesquely wicked is he. Like Mark Antony, for days 
and days along his green-turfed, flowery Nile, he indolently 
floats, openly toying with his red- cheeked Cleopatra, ripen- 
ing his apricot thigh upon the sunny deck. But ashore, all 
this effeminacy is dashed. The brigandish guise which the 
Canaller so proudly sports ; his slouched and gaily-ribboned 
hat betoken his grand features. A terror to the smiling in- 
nocence of the villages through which he floats ; his swart 
visage and boid swagger are not unshunned in cities. Once 
a vagabond on his own canal, I have received good turns 
from one of these Canallers ; I thank him heartily ; would 
fain be not ungrateful ; but it is often one of the prime re- 
deeming qualities of your man of violence, that at times he 
has as stiff an arm to back a poor stranger in a strait, as to 


MOBY DICK. 


239 


plunder a wealthy one. In sum, gentlemen, what the wild- 
ness of this canal life is, is emphatically evinced by this : 
that our wild whale-fishery contains so many of its most 
finished graduates, and that scarce any race of mankind, 
except Sydney men, are so much distrusted by our whaling 
captains. Nor does it at all diminish the curiousness of 
this matter, that to many thousands of our rural boys and 
young men born along its line, the probationary life of the 
Grand Canal furnishes the sole transition between quietly 
reaping in a Christian corn-field, and recklessly ploughing 
the waters of the most barbaric seas. 

“ 4 1 see ! I see ! ’ impetuously exclaimed Don Pedro, spill- 
ing his chicha upon his silvery ruffles. ‘ No need to travel ! 
The world’s one Lima. I had thought, now, that at your 
temperate North the generations were cold and holy as the 
hills. — But the story.’ 

“I left off, gentlemen, where the Lakeman shook the 
backstay. Hardly had he done so, when he was surrounded 
by the three junior mates and the four harpooners, who all 
crowded him to the deck. But sliding down the ropes like 
baleful comets, the two Canallers rushed into the uproar, 
and sought to drag their man out of it towards the fore- 
castle. Others of the sailors joined with them in this at- 
tempt, and a twisted turmoil ensued ; while standing out 
of harm’s way, the valiant captain danced up and down 
with a whale-pike, calling upon his officers to manhandle 
that atrocious scoundrel, and smoke him along to the 
quarter-deck. At intervals, he ran close up to the revolv- 
ing border of the confusion, and prying into the heart of it 
with his pike, sought to prick out the object of his resent- 
ment. But Steelkilt and his desperadoes were too much 
for them all ; they succeeded in gaining the forecastle deck, 
where, hastily slewing about three or four large casks in a 
line with the windlass, these sea-Parisians entrenched them- 
selves behind the barricade. 

“ 4 Come out of that, ye pirates ! ’ roared the captain, now 
menacing them with a pistol in each hand, just brought to 
him by the steward. 4 Come out of that, ye cut-throats ! ’ 

44 Steelkilt leaped on the barricade, and striding up and 
down there, defied the worst the pistols could do ; but gave 
the captain to understand distinctly, that his (Steelkilt’s) 
death would be the signal for a murderous mutiny on the 
part of all hands. Fearing in his heart lest this might 
prove but too true, the captain a little desisted, but still 


240 


MOBY DICK. 


commanded the insurgents instantly to return to their duty. 

“ ‘ Will you promise not to touch us, if we do ? ’ demanded 
their ringleader. 

“ 4 Turn to ! turn to ! — I make no promise ;^to your duty ! 
Do you want to sink the ship, by knocking off at a time 
like this ? Turn to ! ’ and he once more raised a pistol. 

“‘Sink the ship?’ cried Steelkilt. ‘ Aye, let her sink. 
Not a man of us turns to, unless you swear not to raise a 
rope-yarn against us. What say ye, men ?’ turning to his 
comrades. A fierce cheer was their response. 

“ The Lakeman now patrolled the barricade, all the while 
keeping his eye on the Captain, and jerking out such 
sentences as these : — ‘ It’s not our fault ; we didn’t want it ; 
I told him to take his hammer away ; it was boy’s business ; 
he might have known me before this ; I told him not to prick 
the buffalo ; I believe I have broken a finger here against 
his cursed jaw; ain’t those mincing knives down in the 
forecastle there men ? look to those handspikes, my hearties. 
Captain, by God, look to yourself ; say the word ; don’t 
be a fool ; forget it all ; we are ready to turn to ; treat 
us decently, and we’re your men ; but we won’t be flogged. 

“ ‘ Turn to ! I make no promises, turn to, I say ! ’ 

“ ‘ Look ye, now,’ cried the Lakeman, flinging out his 
arm towards him, ‘ there are a few of us here (and I am 
one of them) who have shipped for the cruise, d’ye see ; 
now as you well know, sir we can claim our discharge as 
soon as the anchor is down ; so we don’t want a row ; it’s 
not our interest ; we want to be peaceable ; we are ready 
to work, but we won’t be flogged. ’ 

“ ‘ Turn to ! ’ roared the Captain. 

“ Steelkilt glanced round him a moment, and then said ; 
— ‘ I tell you what it is now, Captain, rather than kill ye, 
and be hung for such a shabby rascal, we won’t lift a hand 
against ye unless ye attack us ; but till you say the word 
about not flogging us, we don’t do a handle turn.’ 

“ ‘ Down into the forecastle then, down with ye, I’ll keep 
ye there till ye’re sick of it. Down ye go.’ 

“‘Shall we?’ cried the ringleader to his men. Most of 
them were against it ; but at length, in obedience to 
Steelkilt, they preceded him down into their dark den, 
growlingly disappearing, like bears into a cave. 

“As the Lakeman’s bare head was just level with the 
planks, the Captain and his posse leaped the barricade, 
and rapidly drawing over the slide of the scuttle, planted 


MOBY DICK. 


241 


their group of hands upon it, and loudly called for the 
steward to bring the heavy brass padlock belonging to the 
companion-way. Then opening the slide a little, the Captain 
whispered something down the crack, closed it, and turned 
the key upon them — ten in number — leaving on deck some 
twenty or more, who thus far had remained neutral. 

“ All night a wide-awake watch was kept by all the 
officers, forward and aft, especially about the forecastle 
scuttle and fore hatchway at which last place it was feared 
the insurgents might emerge, after breaking through the 
bulkhead below. But the hours of darkness passed in 
peace ; the men who still remained at their duty toiling 
hard at the pumps, whose clinking and clanking at intervals 
through the dreary night dismally resounded through the 
ship. 

“ At sunrise the Captain went forward, and knocking on 
the deck, summoned the prisoners to work ; but with a yell 
they refused. Water was then lowered down to them, 
and a couple of handfuls of biscuit were tossed after it ; 
when again turning the key upon them and pocketing it, 
the Captain ^turned to the quarter-deck. Twice every 
day for three days this was repeated ; but on the fourth 
morning a confused wrangling, and then a scuffling was 
heard, as the customary summons was delivered; and 
suddenly four men burst up from the forecastle, saying 
they were ready to turn to. The fetid closeness of the air, 
and a famishing diet, united perhaps to some fears of 
ultimate retribution, had constrained them to surrender at 
discretion. Emboldened by this, the Captain reiterated 
his demand to the rest, but Steelkilt shouted up to him a 
terrific hint to stop his babbling and betake himself where 
he belonged. On the fifth morning three others of the 
mutineers bolted up into the air from the desperate arms 
below that sought to restrain them. Only three were left. 

“ 4 Better turn to now ? ■ said the Captain with a heart- 
less jeer. 

“ 4 Shut us up again, will ye ! ’ cried Steelkilt. 

44 4 Oh ! certainly,’ said the Captain, and the key clicked. 

44 It w T as at this point, gentlemen, that enraged by the de- 
fection of seven of his former associates, and stung by the 
mocking voice that had last hailed him, and maddened by 
his long entombment in a place as black as the bowels of 
despair ; it was then that Steelkilt proposed to the two 
Canallers, thus far apparently of one mind with him, to 

10 


242 


MOBY DICK. 


burst out of their hole at the next summoning of the gar- 
rison ; and armed with their keen mincing knives (long, 
crescentic, heavy implements with a handle at each end) 
run a muck from the bowsprit to the taffrail ; and if by any 
devilishness of desperation possible, seize the ship. For 
himself, he would do this, he said, whether they joined 
him or not. That was the last night he should spend 
in that den. But the scheme met with no opposition 
on the part of the other two ; they swore they were ready for 
that, or for any other mad thing, for anything in short but 
a surrender. And what was more, they each insisted upon 
being the first man on deck, when the time to make the 
rush should come. But to this their leader as fiercely ob- 
jected, reserving that priority for himself ; particularly as 
his two comrades would not yield, the one to the other, in 
the matter ; and both of them could not be first, for the 
ladder would but admit one man at a time. And here, 
gentlemen, the foul play of these miscreants must come 
out. 

“ Upon hearing the frantic project of their leader, each 
in his own separate soul had suddenly lighted, it would 
seem, upon the same piece of treachery, namely ; to be fore- 
most in breaking out, in order to be the first of the three, 
though the last of the ten, to surrender ; and thereby secure 
whatever small chance of pardon such conduct might merit. 
But when Steelkilt made known his determination still to 
lead them to the last, they in somje way, by some subtle 
chemistry of villainy, mixed their before secret treacheries 
together ; and when their leader fell into a doze, verbally 
opened their souls to each other in three sentences ; and 
bound the sleeper with cords and gagged him with cords, 
and shrieked out for the Captain at midnight. 

“ Thinking murder at hand, and smelling in the dark for 
the blood, he and all his armed mates and harpooners rushed 
for the forecastle. In a few minutes the scuttle was opened, 
and, bound hand and foot, the still struggling ringleader was 
shoved up into the air by his perfidious allies, who at once 
claimed the honour of securing a man who had been fully 
ripe for murder. But all these were collared, and dragged 
along the deck like dead cattle ; and, side by side, were seized 
up into the mizzen rigging, like three quarters of meat, and 
there they hung till morning. ‘ Damn ye,’ cried the Cap- 
tain, pacing to and fro before them, ‘the vultures would 
not touch ye, ye villains ! ’ 


MOBY DICK. 


248 


“ At sunrise he summoned all hands ; and separating those 
who had rebelled from those who had taken no part in the 
mutiny, he told the former that he had a good mind to flog 
them all round — thought, upon the whole, he would do so — 
he ought to — justice demanded it ; but for the present, con- 
sidering their timely surrender, he would let them go with 
a reprimand, which he accordingly administered in the ver- 
nacular. 

“ 4 But as for you, ye carrion rogues,’ turning to the three 
men in the rigging — 4 for you I mean to mince ye up for the 
try-pots ; ’ and, seizing a rope, he applied it with all his 
might to the backs of the two traitors, till they yelled no 
more, but lifelessly hung their heads sideways, as the two 
crucified thieves are drawn. 

“ ‘ My wrist is sprained with ye ! ’ he cried, at last ; 4 but 
there is still rope enough left for you, my fine bantam, that 
wouldn’t give up. Take that gag from his mouth, and let 
us hear what he can say for himself.’ 

“ For a moment the exhausted mutineer made a tremu- 
lous motion of his cramped jaws, and then painfully twist- 
ing round his head, said in a sort of hiss, 4 What I say is this 
— and mind it well — if you flog me, I murder you ! ’ 

“ 4 Say ye so ? then see how ye frighten me ’ — and the 
Captain drew off with the rope to strike. 

44 4 Best not,’ hissed the Lakeman. 

44 4 But I must,’ — and the rope was once more drawn 
back for the stroke. 

44 Steelkilt here hissed out something, inaudible to all but 
the Captain ; who, to the amazement of all hands, started 
back, paced the deck rapidly two or three times, and then 
suddenly throwing down his rope, said, 4 1 won’t do it — 
let him go — cut him down : d’ye hear ? ’ 

But as the junior mates were hurrying to execute the 
order, a pale man, with a bandaged head, arrested them — 
Radney the chief mate. Ever since the blow, he had lain 
in his berth ; but that morning, hearing the tumult on the 
deck, he had crept out, and thus far had watched the whole 
scene. Such was the state of his mouth, that he could 
hardly speak; but mumbling something about his being 
willing and able to do what the captain dared not attempt, 
he snatched the rope and advanced to his pinioned foe. 

44 4 You are a coward !’ hissed the Lakeman. 

44 4 So I am but take that.’ The mate was in the very 
act of striking, when another hiss stayed his uplifted arm. 


244 


MOBY DICK. 


He paused : and then pausing no more, made good his word, 
spite of Steelkilt’s threat, whatever that might have been. 
The three men were then cut down, all hands were turned 
to, and, sullenly worked by the moody seamen, the iron 
pumps clanged as before. 

“ Just after dark that day, when one watch had retired 
below, a clamour was heard in the forecastle ; and the two 
trembling traitors running up, besieged the cabin door, say- 
ing they durst not consort with the crew. Entreaties, cuffs, 
and kicks could not drive them back, so at their own in- 
stance they were put down in the ship’s run for salvation. 
Still, no sign of mutiny reappeared among the rest. On 
the contrary, it seemed, that mainly at Steelkilt’s instiga- 
tion they had resolved to maintain the strictest peaceful- 
ness, obey all orders to the last, and, when the ship reached 
port, desert her in a body. But in order to insure the 
speediest end to the voyage, they all agreed to another 
thing — namely, not to sing out for whales, in case any 
should be discovered. For, spite of her leak, and spite of 
all her other perils, the Town-Ho still maintained her mast- 
heads, and her captain was just as willing to lower for a 
fish that moment, as on the day his craft first struck the 
cruising ground ; and Radney the mate was quite as ready 
to change his berth for a boat, and with his bandaged 
mouth seek to gag in death the vital jaw of the whale. 

“ But though the Lakeman had induced the seamen to 
adopt this sort of passiveness in their conduct, he kept his 
own counsel (at least till all was over) concerning his own 
proper and private revenge upon the man who had stung 
him in the ventricles of his heart. He was in Radney the 
chief mate’s watch ; and as if the infatuated man sought to 
run more than half-way to meet his doom, after the scene 
at the rigging, he insisted, against the express counsel of 
the captain, upon resuming the head of his w r atch at night. 
Upon this, and one or two other circumstances, Steelkilt 
systematically built the plan of his revenge. 

“ During the night, Radney had an unseamanlike way of 
sitting on the bulwarks of the quarter-deck, and leaning 
his arm upon the gunwale of the boat which was hoisted 
up there, a little above the ship’s side. In this attitude, it 
was well known Jie sometimes dozed. There was a consider- 
able vacancy between the boat and the ship, and down be- 
tween this was the sea. Steelkilt calculated his time, and 
found that his next trick at the helm would come round at 


MOBY DICK. 


245 


two o’clock, in the morning of the third day from that in 
which he had been betrayed. At his leisure, he employed 
the interval in braiding something very carefully in his 
watches below. 

“ ‘ What are you making there? ” said a shipmate. 

Ui What do you think ? what does it look like ? ’ 

“ 4 Like a lanyard for your bag ; but it’s an odd one, 
seems to me.’ 

44 4 Yes, rather oddish,’ said the Lakeman, holding it at 
arm’s length before him ; 4 but I think it will answer. 
Shipmate, I haven’t enough twine, — have you any?’ 

44 But there was none in the forecastle. 

44 4 Then I must get some from old Rad ; ’ and he rose to 
go aft. 

44 * You don’t mean to go a begging to him ! ’ said a sailor. 

44 4 Why not ? Do you think he won’t do me a turn, when 
it’s to help himself in the end, shipmate ? ’ and going to 
the mate, he. looked at him quietly, and asked him for some 
twine to mend his hammock. It was given him — neither 
twine nor lanyard were seen again ; but the next night an 
iron hall, closely netted, partly rolled from the pocket 
of the Lakeman’s monkey jacket, as he was tucking the 
coat into his hammock for a pillow. TwQjjty-four hours 
after, his trick at the silent helm — nigh to the man who 
was apt to doze over the grave always ready dug to the 
seaman’s hand — that fatal hour was then to come ; and in 
the fore-ordaining soul of Steelkilt, the mate was already 
stark and stretched as a corpse, with his forehead crushed 
in. 

44 But, gentlemen, a fool saved the would-he murderer 
from the bloody deed he had planned. Yet complete 
revenge he had, and without being the avenger. For by a 
mysterious fatality, Heaven itself seemed to step in to take 
out of his hands into its own the damning thing he would 
have done. 

44 It was just between daybreak and sunrise of the morn- 
ing of the second day, when they were washing down the 
decks, that a stupid Teneriffe man, drawing water in the 
main-chains, all at once shouted out, ‘There she rolls! 
there she rolls ! ’ Jesu, what a wdiale ! It was Moby 
Dick. 

44 4 Moby Dick ! ’ cried Don Sebastian ; 4 St. Dominic ! 

Sir sailor, but do whales have christenings ? Whom call 
you Moby Dick ? ’ 


246 


MOB Y DICK. 


“ 4 A very white, and famous, and most deadly immortal 
monster, lion ; — but that would be too long a story.’ 

“‘How? how?’ cried all the young Spaniards, crowding. 

“ ‘ Nay, Dons, Dons — nay, nay ! I cannot rehearse that 
now. Let me get more into the air, sirs.’ 

“ ‘ The chicha ! the chicha ! ’ cried Don Pedro ; ‘ our 
vigorous friend looks faint ; — fill up his empty glass ! ’ 

“No need, gentlemen ; one moment, and I proceed. — Now, 
gentlemen, so suddenly perceiving the snowy whale within 
fifty yards of the ship — forgetful of the compact among the 
crew — in the excitement of the moment, the Teneriffe man 
had instinctively and involuntarily lifted his voice for the 
monster, though for some little time past it had been plainly 
beheld from the three sullen mast-heads. All was now a 
phrensy. ‘The White Whale — the White Whale!’ was 
the cry from captain, mates, and harpooneers, who, un- 
deterred by fearful rumours, were all anxious to capture so 
famous and precious a fish ; while the dogged crew eyed 
askance, and with curses, the appalling beauty of the vast 
milky mass, that lit up by a horizontal spangling sun, 
shifted and glistened like a living opal in the blue morning 
sea. Gentlemen, a strange fatality pervades the whole 
career of these. events, as if verily mapped out before the 
world itself was charted. The mutineer was the bowsman 
of the mate, and when fast to a fish, it was his duty to sit 
next him, while Radney stood up with his lance in the 
prow, and haul in or slacken the line, at the word of com- 
mand. Moreover, when the four boats were lowered, 
the mate’s got the start ; and none howled more fiercely 
with delight than did Steelkilt, as he strained at his oar. 
After a stiff pull, their harpooner got fast, and, spear in 
hand, Radney sprang to the bow. He was always a furious 
man, it seems, in a boat. And now his bandaged cry was, 
to beach him on the whale’s topmost back. Nothing loath, 
his bowsman hauled him up and up, through a blinding 
foam that blent two whitenesses together ; till of a sudden 
the boat struck as against a sunken ledge, and keeling over, 
spilled out the standing mate. That instant, as he fell on 
the whale’s slippery back, the boat righted, and was dashed 
aside by the swell, while Radney was tossed over into the 
sea, on the other flank of the whale. He struck out through 
the spray, and, for an instant, was dimly seen through that 
veil wildly seeking to remove himself from the eye of Moby 
Dick. But the whale rushed round in a sudden maelstrom ; 


MOBY DICK. 247 

seized the swimmer between his jaws ; and rearing high 
up with him, plunged headlong again, and went down. 

“ Meantime, at the first tap of the boat’s bottom, the 
Lakeman had slackened the line, so as to drop astern from 
the whirlpool ; calmly looking on, he thought his own 
thoughts. But a sudden, terrific, downward jerking of the 
boat, quickly brought his knife to the line. He cut it; and 
the whale was free. But, at some distance, Moby Dick 
rose again, with some tatters of Radney’s red woollen shirt, 
caught in the teeth that had destroyed him. All four boats 
gave chase again ; but the whale eluded them, and finally 
wholly disappeared. 

“ In good time, the Town- Ho reached her port — a savage, 
solitary place — where no civilised creature resided. There, 
headed by the Lakeman, all but five or six of the foremast- 
men deliberately deserted among the palms ; eventually, as 
it turned out, seizing a large double war-canoe of the savages, 
and setting sail for some other harbour. 

“ The ship’s company being reduced to but a handful, the 
captain called upon the Islanders to assist him in the 
laborious business of heaving down the ship to stop the 
leak. But to such unresting vigilance over their danger- 
ous allies was this small band of whites necessitated, both 
by night and by day, and so extreme was the hard work 
they underwent, that upon the vessel being ready again for 
sea, they were in such a weakened condition that the cap- 
tain durst not put off with them in so heavy a vessel. After 
taking counsel with his officers, he anchored the ship as far 
off shore as possible ; loaded and ran out his two cannon 
from the bows ; stacked his muskets on the poop ; and 
warning the Islanders not to approach the ship at their 
peril, took one man with him, and setting the sail of his 
best whaleboat, steered straight before the wind for Tahiti, 
five hundred miles distant, to procure a reinforcement to 
his crew. 

“ On the fourth day of the sail, a large canoe was descried, 
which seemed to have touched at a low isle of corals. He 
steered away from it ; but the savage craft bore down on 
him ; and soon the voice of Steelkilt hailed him to heave to, 
or he would run him under water. The captain presented 
a pistol. With one foot on each prow of the yoked war- 
canoes, the Lakeman laughed him to scorn ; assuring him 
that if the pistol so much as clicked in the lock, he would 
bury him in bubbles and foam. 


248 


MOBY DICK. 


« ‘ What clo you want of me ? ’ cried the captain. 

“ 4 Where are you bound ? and for what are you bound V 
demanded Steelkilt ; ‘ no lies.’ 

“ I am bound to Tahiti for more men.’ 

“‘Very good. Let me board you a moment — I come in 
peace.’ With that he leaped from the canoe, swam to the 
boat ; and climbing the gunwale, stood face to face with the 
captain. 

“ ‘ Cross your arms, sir ; throw back your head. Now, 
repeat after me. As soon as Steelkilt leaves me, I swear 
to beach this boat on yonder island, and remain there six 
days. If I do not, may lightnings strike me ! ’ 

“ ‘ A pretty scholar,’ laughed the Lakeman. ‘ Adios, 
Senor!’ and leaping into the sea, he swam back to his 
comrades. 

“Watching the boat till it was fairly beached, and drawn 
up to the roots of the cocoa-nut trees, Steelkilt made sail 
again, and in due time arrived at Tahiti, his own place of 
destination. There, luck befriended him ; two ships were 
about to sail for France, and were providentially in want 
of precisely that number of men which the sailor headed. 
They embarked ; and so for ever got the start of their for- 
mer captain, had he been at all minded to work them legal 
retribution. 

“ Some ten days after the French ships sailed, the whale- 
boat arrived, and the captain was forced to enlist some of 
the more civilised Tahitians, who had been somewhat used 
to the sea. Chartering a small native schooner, he returned 
with them to his vessel ; and finding all right there, again 
resumed his cruisings. * 

“Where Steekilt now is, gentlemen, none know; but 
upon the island of Nantucket, the widow of Radney still 
turns to the sea which refuses to give up its dead ; still 
in dreams sees the awful white whale that destroyed 
him. * * # * 

“ ‘ Are you through ? ’ said Don Sebastian, quietly. 

“ ‘ I am, Don.’ 

“ ‘ Then I entreat you, tell me if to the best of your own 
convictions, this your story is in substance really true? It 
is so passing wonderful ! Did you get it from an unques- 
tionable source? Bear with me if I seem to press.’ 

“ ‘ Also bear with all of us, sir sailor ; for we all join in 
Don Sebastian’s suit,’ cried the company, with exceeding 
interest. • 


MOBY DICK. 


249 


“ ‘ Is there a copy of the Holy Evangelists in the Golden 
Inn, gentlemen ? ’ 

“ ‘ Nay,’ said Don Sebastian ; c but I know a worthy priest 
near by, who will quickly procure one for me. I go for it ; 
but are you well advised ? this may grow too serious.’ 

“ ‘ Will you be so good as to bring the priest also, Don ?’ 

“ ‘ Though there are no Auto-da- Fes in Lima now,’ said 
one of the company to another ; 4 1 fear our sailor friend 
runs risk of the archiepiscopacy. Let us withdraw more 
out of the moonlight. I see no need of this.’ 

“ 4 Excuse me for running after you, Don Sebastian ; but 
may I also beg that you will be particular in procuring 
the largest sized Evangelists you can.’ 

###### 

44 4 This is the priest, he brings you the Evangelists,’ said 
Don Sabas tian, gravely, returning with a tall and solemn 
figure. 

44 4 Let me remove my hat. Now, venerable priest, further 
into the light, and hold the Holy Book before me that I 
may touch it.’ 

44 4 So help me, Heaven, and on my honour the story I have 
told ye, gentlemen, is in substance and its great items, true. 
I know it to be true ; it happened on this ball ; I trod the 
ship ; I knew the crew ; I have seen and talked with Steelkilt 
since the death of Radney.’ ” 


CHAPTER LV. 

OF THE MONSTROUS PICTURES OF WHALES. 

I shall ere long paint to you as well as one can without 
canvas, something like the true form of the whale as he 
actually appears to the eye of the whaleman when in his 
own absolute body the whale is moored alongside the whale- 
ship so that he can be fairly stepped upon there. It may 
be worth while, therefore, previously to advert to those 
curious imaginary portraits of him which even down to the 
present day confidently challenge the faith of the landsman. 
It is time to set the world right in this matter, by proving 
such pictures of the whale all wrong. 


250 


MOB Y DICK . 


It may be that the primal source of all those pictorial de- 
lusions will be found among the oldest Hindoo, Egyptian, 
and Grecian sculptures. For ever since those inventive but 
unscrupulous times when on the marble panellings of tem- 
ples, the pedestals of statues, and on shields, medallions, 
cups, and coins, the dolphin was drawn in scales of chain- 
armor like Saladin’s, and a helmeted head like St. George’s ; 
ever since then has something of the same sort of license 
prevailed, not only in most popular pictures of the whale, 
but in many scientific presentations of him. 

Now, by all odds, the most ancient extant portrait any way s 
purporting to be the whale’s, is to be found in the famous 
cavern-pagoda of Elephanta, in India. The Brahmins main- 
tain that in the almost endless sculptures of that immemo- 
rial pagoda, all the trades and pursuits, every conceivable 
avocation of man, were prefigured ages before any of them 
actually came into being. No wonder then, that in some 
sort our* noble profession of whaling should have been there 
shadowed forth. The Hindoo whale referred to, occurs in 
a separate department of the wall, depicting the incarnation 
of Vishnu in the form of leviathan, learnedly known as the 
Matse Avatar. But though this sculpture is half man and 
half whale, so as only to give the tail of the latter, yet that 
small section of him is all wrong. It looks more like the 
tapering tail of an anaconda, than the broad palm of the true 
whale’s majestic flukes. 

But go to the old Galleries, and look now at a great Chris- 
tian painter’s portrait of this fish ; for he succeeds no better 
than the antediluvian Hindoo. It is Guido’s picture of Per- 
seus rescuing Andromeda from the sea-monster or whale. 
Where did Guido get the model of such a strange creature 
as that ? Nor does Hogarth, in painting that same scene in 
his own “ Perseus Descending,” make out one whit better. 
The huge corpulence of that Hogarthian monster undulates 
on the surface, scarcely drawing one inch of water. It has 
a sort of howdah on its back, and its distended tusked mouth 
into which the billows are rolling, might be taken for the 
Traitors’ Gate leading from the Thames by water into the 
Tower. Then, there are the Prodromus whales of old Scotch 
Sibbald, and Jonah’s whale, as depicted in the prints of old 
Bibles and the cuts of old primers. What shall be said of 
these Y As for the bookbinder’s whale winding like a vine- 
stalk round the stalk of a descending anchor — as stamped 
and gilded on the backs and title-pages of many books both 


MOBY DICK. 


251 


old and new— that is a very picturesque but purely fabulous 
creature, imitated, I take it, from the like figures on antique 
vases. Though universally denominated a dolphin, I never- 
theless call this bookbinder’s fish an attempt at a whale ; 
because it was so intended when the device was first intro- 
duced. It was introduced by an old Italian publisher some- 
where about the 15th century, during the Revival of Learn- 
ing; and in those days, and even down to a comparatively 
late period, dolphins were popularly supposed to be a spe- 
cies of the Leviathan. 

In the vignettes and other embellishments of some ancient 
books you will at times meet with very curious touches at 
the whale, where all manner of spouts, jets d’eau, hot springs 
and cold, Saratoga and Baden-Baden, come bubbling up from 
his unexhausted brain. In the title-page of the original 
edition of the “ Advancement of Learning ” you will find 
some curious whales. 

But quitting all these unprofessional attempts, let us 
glance at those pictures of leviathan purporting to be sober, 
scientific delineations, by those who know. In old Harris’s 
collection of voyages there are some plates of whales ex- 
tracted from a Dutch book of voyages, A. D. 1671, entitled 
“ A Whaling Voyage to Spitzbergen in the ship Jonas in 
the Whale, Peter Peterson of Friesland, master.” In one 
of those plates the whales, like great rafts of logs, are rep- 
resented lying among ice-isles, with white bears running 
over their living backs. In another plate, the prodigious 
blunder is made of representing the whale with perpendi- 
cular flukes. 

Then again, there is an imposing quarto, written by one 
Captain Colnett, a Post Captain in the English navy, en- 
titled “ A Voyage round Cape Horn into the South Seas, 
for the purpose of extending the Spermaceti Whale Fish- 
eries.” In this book is an outline purporting to be a 
“Picture of a Physeter or Spermaceti whale, drawn by 
scale from one killed on the coast of Mexico, August, 1793, 
and hoisted on deck.” I doubt not the captain had this 
veracious picture taken for the benefit of his marines. To 
mention but one thing about it, let me say that it has an 
eye which applied, according to the accompanying scale, to 
a full grown sperm whale, would make the eye of that 
whale a bow- window some five feet long. Ah, my gallant 
captain, why did ye not give us Jonah looking out of that 
eye! 


252 


MOBY DICK. 


Nor are the most conscientious compilations of Natural 
History for the benefit of the young and tender, free from 
the same heinousness of mistake. Look at that popular 
work “ Goldsmith’s Animated Nature.” In the abridged 
London edition of 1807, there are plates of an alleged 
“whale” and a “narwhal.” I do not wish to seem inele- 
gant, but this unsightly whale looks much like an amputated 
sow ; and, as for the narwhal, one glimpse at it is enough 
to amaze one, that in this nineteenth century such a hippo- 
griff could he palmed for genuine upon* any intelligent 
public of schoolboys. 

Then, again, in 1825, Bernard Germain, Count de Lace- 
pede, a great naturalist, published a scientific systemised 
whale hook, wherein are several pictures of the different 
species of the Leviathan. All these are not only incorrect, 
hut the picture of the Mysticetus or Greenland whale (that 
is to say, the Bight whale), even Scoresby, a long experi- 
enced man as touching that species, declares not to have 
its counterpart in nature. 

But the placing of the cap-sheaf to all this blundering 
business was reserved for the scientific Frederick Cuvier, 
brother to the famous Baron. In 1836, he published a 
Natural History of Whales, in which he gives what he calls 
a picture of the Sperm Whale. Before showing that pic- 
ture to any Nantucketer, you had best provide for your 
summary retreat from Nantucket. In a word, Frederick 
Cuvier’s Sperm Whale is not a Sperm Whale, but a squash. 
Of course, he never had the benefit of a whaling voyage 
(such men seldom have), but whence he derived that 
picture, who can tell ? Perhaps he got it as his scientific 
predecessor in the same field, Desmarest, got one of his 
authentic abortions ; that is, from a Chinese drawing. And 
what sort of lively lads with the pencil those Chinese are, 
many queer cups and saucers inform us. 

As for the sign-painters’ whales seen in the streets hang- 
ing over the shops of oil-dealers, what shall he said of them ? 
They are generally Richard III. whales, with dromedary 
humps, and very savage; breakfasting on three or four 
sailor tarts, that is whaleboats full of mariners : their 
deformities floundering in seas of blood and blue paint. 

But these manifold mistakes in depicting the whale are 
not so very surprising after all. Consider ! Most of the 
scientific drawings have been taken from the stranded fish ; 
and the.se are about as correct as a drawing of a wrecked 


MOBY DICK. 


253 


ship, with broken back, would correctly represent the 
noble animal itself in all its undashed pride of hull and 
spars. Though elephants have stood for their full-lengths, 
the living leviathan has never yet fairly floated himself 
for his portrait. The living whale, in his full majesty and 
significance, is only to be seen at sea in unfathomable 
waters ; and afloat the vast bulk of him is out of sight, 
like a launched line-of-battle ship ; and out of that element 
it is a thing eternally impossible for mortal man to hoist 
him bodily into the air, so as to preserve all his mighty 
swells and undulations. And, not to speak of the highly 
presumable difference of contour between a young sucking 
whale and a full-grown Platonian Leviathan ; yet, even in 
the case of one of those young sucking whales hoisted to a 
ship’s deck, such is then the outlandish, eel-like, limbered, 
varying shape of him, that his precise expression the devil 
himself could not catch. 

But it may be fancied, that from the naked skeleton of 
the stranded whale, accurate hints may be derived touch- 
ing his true form. Not at all. For it is one of the more 
curious things about this leviathan, that his skeleton gives 
very little idea of his general shape. Though Jeremy Ben- 
tham’s skeleton, which hangs for candelabra in the library 
of one of his executors, correctly conveys the idea of a burly- 
browed utilitarian old gentleman, with all Jeremy’s other 
leading personal characteristics ; yet nothing of this kind 
could be inferred from any leviathan’s articulated bones. 
In fact, as the great Hunter says, the mere skeleton of the 
whale bears the same relation to the fully invested and 
padded animal as the insect does to the chrysalis that 
so roundingly envelops it. This peculiarity is strikingly 
evinced in the head, as in some part of this book will be 
incidentally shown. It is also very curiously displayed in 
the side fin, the bones of which almost exactly answer to 
the bones of the human hand, minus only the thumb. This 
fin has four regular bone-fingers, the index, middle, ring, 
and little finger. But all these are permanently lodged in 
their fleshy covering, as the human fingers in an artificial 
covering. “ However recklessly the whale may sometimes 
serve us,” said humorous Stubb one day, “ he can never be 
truly said to handle us without mittens.” 

For all these reasons, then, any way you may look at it, 
you must needs conclude that the great Leviathan is that 
one creature in the world which must remain unpainted to 


254 


MOBY DICK. 


the last. True, one portrait may hit the mark much nearer 
than another, but none can hit it with any very considera- 
ble degree of exactness. So there is no earthly way of find- 
ing out precisely what the whale really looks like. And 
the only mode in which you can derive even a tolerable idea 
of his living contour, is by going a whaling yourself ; but 
by so doing, you run no small risk of being eternally stove 
and sunk by him. Wherefore, it seems to me you had best 
not be too fastidious in your curiosity touching this Levia- 
than. 


CHAPTER LYI. 

OF THE LESS ERRONEOUS PICTURES OF WHALES, AND THE TRUE 
PICTURES OF WHALING SCENES. 

In connection with the monstrous pictures of whales, I am 
strongly tempted here to enter upon those still more mon- 
strous stories of them which are to be fomid in certain books, 
both ancient and modern, especially in Pliny, Purchas, 
Hackluyt, Harris, Cuvier, etc. But I pass that matter by. 

1 know of only four published outlines of the great Sperm 
Whale : Colnett’s, Huggins’s, Fredrick Cuvier’s, and Beale’s. 
In the previous chapter Colnett and Cuvier have been 
referred to. Huggins’s is far better than theirs ; but, by 
great odds, Beale's is the best. All Beale’s drawings of 
this whale are good, excepting the middle figure in the 
picture of three whales in various attitudes, capping his 
second chapter. His frontispiece, boats attacking Sperm 
Whales, though no doubt calculated to excite the civil scep- 
ticism of some parlour men, is admirably correct and life-like 
in its general effect. Some of the Sperm Whale drawings 
in J. Ross BroAvne are pretty correct in contour ; but they 
are wretchedly engraved. That is not his fault though. 

Of the Right Whale, the best outline pictures are in Scores- 
by ; but they are drawn on too small a scale to convey a desir- 
able impression. He has but one picture of whaling scenes, 
and this is a sad deficiency, because it is by such pictures 
only, when at all well done, that you can derive anything 
like a truthful idea of the living whale as seen by his 
living hunters. 


MOBY DICK, 






But - t< • all in all, by far the finest, though in some 
detail r most correct, presentations of whales and 
whali to be anywhere found, are two large French 

engrf _ . >eil executed, and taken from paintings by one 
Gam . actively, they represent attacks on the Sperm 

and ale. In the first engraving a noble Sperm 

Whale is depicted in full majesty of might, just risen beneath 
the boat from the profundities of the ocean, and bearing 
high in the air upon his back the terrific wreck of the stoven 
planks. The prow of the boat is partially unbroken, and is 
drawn just balancing upon the monster’s spine ; and stand- 
ing in that prow, for that one single incomputable flash of 
time, you behold an oarsman, half shrouded by the incensed 
boiling spout of the whale, and in the act of leaping as if from 
a precipice. The action of the whole thing is wonderfully 
good and true. The half emptied line-tub floats on the 
whitened sea ; wooden poles of the spilled harpoons obliquely 
bob in it ; the heads of the swimming crew are scattered 
about the whale in contrasting expressions of affright; 
while in the black stormy distance the ship is bearing down 
upon the scene. Serious fault might be found with the 
anatomical details of this whale, but let that pass ; since 
for the life of me, I could not draw so good a one. 

In the second engraving, the boat is in the act of drawing 
alongside the barnacled flank of a large running Right 
Whale that rolls his black weedy bulk in the sea like some 
mossy rockslide from the Patagonian cliffs. His jets are 
erect, full, and black like soot ; so that from so abounding 
a smoke in the chimney, you would think there must be a 
brave supper cooking in the great bowels below. Sea fowls 
are pecking at the small crabs, shell-fish, and other sea 
candies and maccaroni, which the Right Whale sometimes 
carries on his pestilent back. And all the while the thick- 
lipped leviathan is rushing through the deep, leaving tons 
of tumultuous white curds in his wake, and causing the 
slight boat to rock in the swells like a skiff caught nigh 
the paddle-wheels of an ocean steamer. Thus, the fore- 
ground is all raging commotion ; but behind, in admirable 
artistic contrast, is the glassy level of a sea becalmed, the 
drooping unstarched sails of the powerless ship, and the 
j,i< "t mass of a dead whale,' a conquered fortress, with the 
nture lazily hanging from the whale-pole inserted 
sviot hole. 

the painter is, or was, I know not. But my 


256 


MOBY DICK. 


life for it he was either practically conversant with his 
subject or else marvellously tutored by some experienced 
whaleman. The French are the lads for painting action. 
Go and gaze upon all the paintings of Europe, and where 
will you find such a gallery of living and breathing com- 
motion on canvas, as in that triumphal hall at Versailles; 
where the beholder fights his way, pell-mell, through the 
* consecutive great battles of France ; where every sword 
armed kings seems a flash of the Northern Lights, and the 
successive and emperors dash by, like a charge of crowned 
centaurs ? Not wholly unworthy of a place in that gallery, 
are these sea battle-pieces of Garney. 

The natural aptitude of the French for seizing the pictur- 
esqueness of things seems to be peculiarly evinced in what 
paintings and engravings they have of their whaling scenes. 
With not one tenth-of England’s experience in the fishery, 
and not the thousandth part of that of the Americans, they 
have nevertheless furnished both nations with the only 
finished sketches at all capable of conveying the real spirit 
of the whale hunt. For the most part, the English and 
American whale draughtsmen seem entirely content with 
presenting the mechanical outline of things, such as the 
vacant profile of the whale ; which, so far as picturesqueness 
of effect is concerned, is. about tantamount to sketching the 
profile of a pyramid. Even Scoresby, the justly renowned 
Right whaleman, after giving us a stiff full length of the 
Greenland whale, and three or four delicate miniatures of 
narwhals and porpoises, treats us to a series of classical 
engravings of boat-hooks, chopping knives, and grapnels ; 
and with the microscopic diligence of a Leuwenhoeck sub- 
mits to the inspection of a shivering world ninety-six-fac- 
similes of magnified Arctic snow crystals. I mean no 
disparagement to the excellent voyager (I honour him for a 
veteran), but in so important a matter it was certainly an 
oversight not to have procured for every crystal a sworn 
affidavit taken before a Greenland Justice of the Peace. 

In addition to those fine engravings from Garney, there 
are two other French engravings worthy of note, by some 
one who subscribes himself “ H. Durand.” One of them, 
though not precisely adapted to our present purpose, never- 
theless deserves mention on other accounts. It is a quiet 
noon-scene among the isles of the Pacific ; a French whaler 
anchored, inshore, in a calm, and lazily taking water on 
hoard; the loosened sails of the ship, and the long leaves 


MOBY DICK. 


257 


of the palms in the background, both drooping together in 
the breezeless air. The effect is very fine, when considered 
with reference to its presenting the hardy fishermen under 
one of their few aspects of oriental repose. The other en- 
graving is quite a different affair : the ship hove-to upon 
the open sea, and in the very heart of the Leviathanic life, 
with a Right Whale alongside; the vessel (in the act of 
cutting-in) hove over to the monster as if to a quay ; and a 
boat, hurriedly pushing off from this scene of activity, is 
about giving chase to whales in the distance. The harpoons 
and lances lie levelled for use ; three oarsmen are just setting 
the mast in its hole ; while from a sudden roll of the sea, the 
little craft stands half-erect out of the water, like a rearing 
horse. From the ship, the smoke of the torments of the 
boiling whale is going up like the smoke over a village of 
smithies ; and to windward, a black cloud, rising up with 
earnest of squalls and rains, seems to quicken the activity 
of the excited seamen. 


CHAPTER LVII. 


OF WHALES IN PAINT ; IN TEETH ; IN WOOD J IN SHEET-IRON ; 

IN STONE ; IN MOUNTAINS ; IN STARS. 

On Tower Hill, as you go down to the London docks, you 
may have seen a crippled beggar (or hedger , as the sailors 
say) holding a painted board before him, representing the 
tragic scene in which he lost his leg. There are three whales 
and three boats ; and one of the boats (presumed to contain 
the missing leg in all its original integrity) is being crunched 
by the jaws of the foremost whale. Any time these ten 
years, they tell me, has that man held up ‘that picture, and 
exhibited that stump to an incredulous world. But the 
time of his justification has now come. His three whales 
are as good whales as were ever published in Wapping, at 
any rate ; and his stump as unquestionable a stump as 
any you will find in the western clearings. But, though 
for ever mounted on that stump, never a stump-speech does 
the poor whaleman make ; but, with downcast eyes, stands 
ruefully contemplating his own amputation. 


258 


MOBY DICK. 


Throughout the Pacific, and also in Nantucket, and New 
Bedford, and Sag Harbour, you will come across lively 
sketches of whales and whaling-scenes, graven by the 
fishermen themselves on Sperm Whale-teeth, or ladies’ 
busks wrought out of the Bight Whale-bone, and other like 
skrimshander articles, as the whalemen call the numerous 
little ingenious contrivances they elaborately carve out of 
the rough material, in their hours of ocean leisure. Some 
of them have little boxes of dentistical-looking implements, 
specially intended for the skrimshandering business. But, 
in general, they toil with their jack-knives alone ; and, 
with that almost omnipotent tool of the sailor, they will 
turn you out anything you please, in the way of a mariner’s 
fancy. 

Long exile from Christendom and civilisation inevitably 
restores a man to that condition in which God placed him, 
i. e r what is called savagery. Your true whale-hunter is as 
much a savage as an Iroquois. I myself am a savage, own- 
ing no allegiance but to the King of the Cannibals; and 
ready at any moment to rebel against him. 

Now, one of the peculiar characteristics of the savage in 
his domestic hours, is his wonderful patience of industry. 
An ancient Hawaiian war-club or spear-paddle, in its full 
multiplicity and elaboration of carving, is as great a trophy 
of human perseverance as a Latin lexicon. For, with but 
a bit of broken sea-shell or a shark’s tooth, that miraculous 
intricacy of wooden network has been achieved; and it 
has cost steady years of steady application. 

As with the Hawaiian savage, so with the white sailor- 
savage. With the same marvellous patience, and with the 
same single shark’s tooth, of his one poor jack-knife, he 
will carve you a bit of bone sculpture, not quite as work- 
manlike, but as close packed in its maziness of design, as 
the Greek savage, Achilles’s shield ; and full of barbaric 
spirit and suggestiveness, as the prints of that fine old 
Dutch savage, Albert Durer. 

Wooden whales, or whales cut in profile out of the small 
dark slabs of the noble South Sea war- wood, are frequently 
met with in the forecastles of American whalers. Some of 
them are done with much accuracy. 

At some old gable-roofed country houses you will see 
brass whales hung by the tail for knockers to the roadside 
door. When the porter is sleepy, the anvil-headed whale 
would be best. But these knocking whales are seldom 


MOBY DICK. 


259 


remarkable as faithful essays. On the spires of some old- 
fashioned churches you will see sheet-iron whales placed 
there for weather-cocks ; hut they are so elevated, and be- 
sides that are to all intents and purposes so labelled with 
u Hands off!" you cannot examine them closely enough to 
decide upon their merit. 

In bony, ribby regions of the earth, where at the base of 
high broken cliffs masses of rock lie strewn in fantastic 
groupings upon the plain, you will often discover images 
as of the petrified forms of the Leviathan partly merged in 
grass, which of a windy day breaks against them in a surf 
of green surges. 

Then, again, in mountainous countries where the trav- 
eller is continually girdled by amphitheatrical heights; 
here and there from some lucky point of view you will catch 
passing glimpses of the profiles of whales defined along the 
undulating ridges. But you must be a thorough whale- 
man, to see these sights ; and not only that, but if you 
wish to return to such a sight again, you must be sure and 
take the exact intersecting latitude and longitude of your 
first standpoint, else so chance-like are such observations of 
the hills, that your precise, previous standpoint would re- 
quire a laborious rediscovery; like the Soloma Islands, 
which still remain incognita, though once high-ruffed Men- 
danna trod them and old Figuera chronicled them. 

Nor when expandingly lifted by your subject, can you 
fail to trace out great whales in the starry heavens, and 
boats in pursuit of them ; as when long filled with thoughts 
of war the Eastern nations saw armies locked in battle 
among the clouds. Thus at the North have I chased Levi- 
athan round and round the Pole with the revolutions of 
the bright points that first defined him to me. And beneath 
the effulgent Antarctic skies I have boarded the Argo- 
Navis, and joined the chase against the starry Cetus far 
beyond the utmost stretch of Hydras and the Flying Fish. 

With a frigate’s anchors for my bridle-bitts and fasces of 
harpoons for spurs, would I couid mount that whale and 
leap the topmost skies, to see whether the fabled heavens 
with all their countless tents really lie encamped beyond 
my mortal sight ! 


200 


MOBY DICK. 


CHAPTER LVIII. 

BEIT. 

Steeeing north-eastward from the Crozetts, we fell in 
with vast meadows of brit, the minute, yellow substance, 
upon which the Right Whale largely feeds. For leagues 
and leagues it undulated round us, so that we seemed to 
be sailing through boundless fields of ripe and golden 
wheat. 

On the second day, numbers of Right Whales were 
seen, who, secure from the attack of a Sperm Whaler 
like the Pequod, with open jaws sluggishly swam through 
the brit, which, adhering to the fringing fibres of that 
wondrous Venetian blind in their mouths, was in that 
manner separated from the water that escaped at the lip. 

As morning mowers, who side by side slowly and 
seethingly advance their scythes through the long wet 
grass of marshy meads; even so these monsters swam, 
making a strange, grassy, cutting sound ; and leaving 
behind them endless swaths of blue upon the yellow sea.* 

But it was only the sound they made as they parted 
the brit which at all reminded one of mowers. Seen from 
the mast-heads especially when they paused and were 
stationary for a while, their vast black forms looked more 
like lifeless masses of rock than anything else. And as 
in the great hunting countries of India, the stranger at a 
distance will sometimes pass on the plains recumbent 
elephants without knowing them to be such, taking them 
for bare, blackened elevations of the soil ; even so, often, 
with him, who for the first time beholds this species of 
the leviathans of the sea. And even when recognised at 
last, their immense magnitude renders it very hard really 
to believe that such bulky masses of overgrowth can 

* That part of the sea known among whalemen as the “ Brazil 
Banks ” does not bear that name as the Banks of Newfoundland do, 
because of there being shallows and soundings there, but because of 
this remarkable meadow-like appearance, caused by the vast drifts of 
brit continually floating in those latitudes, where the Right Whale is 
often chased. 


MOBY DICK. 


261 


possibly be instinct, in all parts, with the same sort of 
life that lives in a dog or a horse. 

Indeed, in other respects, you can hardly regard any 
creatures of the deep with the same feelings that you do 
those of the shore. For though some old naturalists have 
maintained that all creatures of the land are of their kind 
in the sea; and though taking a broad general view of 
the thing, this may very well be ; yet coming to speciali- 
ties, where for example, does the ocean furnish any fish 
that in disposition answers to the sagacious kindness of 
the dog? The accursed shark alone can in any generic 
respect be said to bear comparative analogy to him. 

But though to landsmen in general the native inhabi- 
tants of the seas have ever been regarded with emotions 
unspeakably unsocial and repelling ; though we know the 
sea to be an everlasting terra incognita, so that Columbus 
sailed over numberless unknown worlds to discover his 
one superficial western one ; though, by vast odds, the 
most terrific of all mortal disasters have immemorially 
and indiscriminately befallen tens and hundreds of thou- 
sands of those who have gone upon the waters; though 
but a moment’s consideration will teach, that however 
baby man may brag of his science and skill, and however 
much, in a flattering future, that science and skill may 
augment ; yet for ever and for ever, to the crack of doom, 
the sea will insult and murder him, and pulverise the 
stateliest, stiffest frigate he can make; nevertheless, by 
the continual repetition of these very impressions, man 
has lost that sense of the full awfulness of the sea which 
aboriginally belongs to it. 

The first boat we read of, floated on an ocean, that with 
Portuguese vengeance had whelmed a whole world without 
leaving so much as a widow. That same ocean rolls now ; 
that same ocean destroyed the wrecked ships of last year. 
Yea, foolish mortals, Noah’s flood is not yet subsided ; two 
thirds of the fair world it yet covers. 

Wherein differ the sea and the land, that a miracle upon 
one is not a miracle upon the other ? Preternatural terrors 
rested upon the Hebrews, when under the feet of Korah 
and his company the live ground opened and swallowed 
them up for ever ; yet not a modern sun ever sets, but in 
precisely the same manner the live sea swallows up ships 
and crews. 

But not only is the sea such a foe to man who is an alien 


262 


MOBY DICK. 


to it, but it is also a fiend to its own offspring ; worse than 
the Persian host who murdered his own guests ; sparing not 
the creatures which itself hath spawned. Like a savage 
tigress that tossing in the jungle overlays her own cubs, so 
the sea dashes even the mightiest whales against the rocks, 
and leaves them there side by side with the split wrecks of 
ships. No mercy, no power but its own controls it. Pant- 
ing and snorting like a mad battle steed that has lost its 
rider, the masterless ocean overruns the globe. 

Consider the subtleness of the sea ; how its most dreaded 
creatures glide under water, unapparent for the most part, 
and treacherously hidden beneath the loveliest tints of 
azure. Consider also the devilish brilliance and beauty of 
many of its most remorseless tribes, as the dainty embel- 
lished shape of many species of sharks. Consider, once 
more, the universal cannibalism of the sea ; all whose crea- 
tures prey upon each other, carrying on eternal war since 
the world began. 

Consider all this ; and then turn to this green, gentle, and 
most docile earth; consider them both, the sea and the 
land ; and do you not find a strange analogy to something 
in yourself ? For as this appalling ocean surrounds the 
verdant land, so in the soul of man there lies one insular 
Tahiti, full of peace and joy, but encompassed by all the 
horrors of the half -known life. God keep thee ! Push not 
off from that isle, thou canst never return ! 


CHAPTER LIX. 

SQUID. 

Slowly wading through the meadows of brit, the Pequod 
still held on her way north-eastward towards the island of 
Java; a gentle air impelling her keel, so that in the sur- 
rounding serenity her three tall tapering masts mildly 
waved to that languid breeze, as three mild palms on a 
plain. And still, at wide intervals in the silvery night, the 
lonely, alluring jet would be seen. 

But one transparent blue morning, when a stillness 
almost preternatural spread over the sea, however unat- 


MOBY DICK. 


268 


tended with any stagnant calm ; when the long burnished 
sun-glade on the waters seemed a golden finger laid across 
them, enjoining some secrecy ; when the slippered waves 
whispered together as they softly ran on ; in this profound 
hush of the visible sphere a strange spectre was seen by 
Daggoo from the main-mast-head. 

In the distance, a great white mass lazily rose, and rising 
higher and higher, and disentangling itself from the azure, 
at last gleamed before our prow like a snow-slide, new slid 
from the hills. Thus glistening for a moment, as slowly it 
subsided, and sank. Then once more arose, and silently 
gleamed. It seemed not a whale ; and yet is this Moby 
Dick ? thought Daggoo. Again the phantom went down, 
but on re-appearing once more, with a stiletto-like cry that 
startled every man from his nod, the negro yelled out — 
“ There ! there again ! there she breaches ! right ahead ! 
The White Whale, the White Whale ! ” 

Upon this, the seamen rushed to the yard-arms, as in 
swarming- time the bees rush to the boughs. Bareheaded in 
the sultry sun, Ahab stood on the bowsprit, and with one hand 
pushed far behind in readiness to wave his orders to the 
helmsman, cast his eager glance in the direction indicated 
aloft by the outstretched motionless arm of Daggoo. 

Whether the flitting attendance of the one still and solitary 
jet had gradually worked upon Ahab, so that he was now 
prepared to connect the ideas of mildness and repose with 
the first sight of the particular whale he pursued ; however 
this was, or whether his eagerness betrayed him ; which- 
ever way it might have been, no sooner did he distinctly 
perceive the white mass, than with a quick intensity he 
instantly gave orders for lowering. 

The four boats were soon on the water ;Ah.ab’s in advance, 
and all swiftly pulling towards their prey. Soon it went 
down, and while, with oars suspended, we were awaiting its 
reappearance, lo ! in the same spot where it sank, once more 
it slowly rose. Almost forgetting for the moment all 
thoughts of Moby Dick, Ave now gazed at the most wondrous 
phenomenon which the secret seas have hitherto revealed 
to mankind. A vast pulpy mass, furlongs in length and 
breadth, of a glancing cream-colour, lay floating on the Avater, 
innumerable long arms radiating from its centre, and curl- 
ing and twisting like a nest of anacondas, as if blindly to 
clutch at any hapless object within reach. No perceptible 
face or front did it have ; no conceivable token of either 


204 


MOBY DICK. 


sensation or instinct ; but undulated there on the billows, 
an unearthly, formless, chance-like apparition of life. 

As with a low sucking sound it slowly disappeared again, 
Starbuck, still gazing at the agitated waters where it had 
sunk, with a wild voice exclaimed — “ Almost rather had I 
seen Moby Dick and fought him, than to have seen thee, 
thou white ghost ! ” 

“What was it, sir?” said Flask. 

“ The great live squid, which, they say, few whale-ships 
ever beheld, and returned to their ports to tell of it.” 

But Ahab said nothing ; turning his boat, he sailed back 
to the vessel ; the rest as silently following. 

Whatever superstitions the sperm whalemen in general 
have connected with the sight of this object, certain it is, 
that a glimpse of it being so very unusual, that circumstance 
had gone far to invest it with portentousness. So rarely is 
it beheld, that though one and all of them declare it to be 
the largest animated thing in the ocean, yet very few of 
them have any but the most vague ideas concerning its true 
nature and form ; notwithstanding, they believe it to furnish 
to the sperm wdiale his only food. For though other species 
of whales find their food above water, and may be seen by 
man in the act of feeding, the spermaceti whale obtains his 
whole food in unknown zones below the surface ; and only 
by inference is it that any one can tell of what, precisely, 
that food consists. At times, when closely pursued, he will 
disgorge what are supposed to be the detached arms of the 
squid ; some of them thus exhibited exceeding twenty and 
thirty feet in length. They fancy that the monster to 
which these arms belonged ordinarily clings by them to the 
bed of the ocean ; and that the sperm whale, unlike other 
species, is supplied with teeth in order to attack and tear it. 

There seems some ground to imagine that the great 
Kraken of Bishop Pontoppodan may ultimately resolve 
itself into Squid. The manner in which the Bishop describes 
it, as alternately rising and sinking, with some other par- 
ticulars he narrates, in all this the two correspond. But 
much abatement is necessary with respect to the incredible 
bulk he assigns it. 

By some naturalists who have vaguely heard rumours of 
the mysterious creature, here spoken of, it is included 
among the class of cuttle-fish, to w^hicli, indeed, in certain, 
external respects it would seem to belong, but only as the 
Anak of the tribe. 


MOBY DICK. 


265 


CHAPTER LX. 

THE LINE. 

W ith reference to the whaling scene shortly to he de- 
scribed, as well as for the better understanding of all sim- 
ilar scenes elsewhere presented, I have here to speak of the 
magical, sometimes horrible whale-line. 

The line originally used in the fishery was of the best 
hemp, slightly vapoured with tar, not impregnated with it, 
as in the case of ordinary ropes ; for while tar, as ordinarily 
used, makes the hemp more pliable to the rope-maker, and 
also renders the rope itself more convenient to the sailor 
for common ship use ; yet, not only would the ordinary 
quantity too much stiffen the whale-line for the close coil- 
ing to which it must be subjected ; but as most seamen are 
beginning to learn, tar in general by no means adds to the 
rope’s durability or strength, however much it may give it 
compactness and gloss. 

Of late years the Manilla rope has in the American fishery 
almost entirely superseded hemp as a material for whale- 
lines ; for, though not so durable as hemp, it is stronger, 
and far more soft and elastic ; and I will add (since there is 
an aesthetic in all things), is much more handsome and be- 
coming to the boat, than hemp. Hemp is a dusky, dark 
fellow, a sort of Indian ; but Manilla is as a golden-haired 
Circassian to behold. 

The whale-line is only two-thirds of an inch in thickness. 
At first sight, you would not think it so strong as it really 
is. By experiment its one and fifty yarns will each sus- 
pend a weight of one hundred and twenty pounds ; so that 
the whole rope will bear a strain nearly equal, to three tons. 
In length, the common sperm whale-line measures some- 
thing over two hundred fathoms. Towards the stern of the 
boat it is spirally coiled away in the tub, not like the worm- 
pipe of a still though, but so as to form one round, cheese- 
shaped mass of densely bedded “ sheaves,” or layers of con- 
centric spiralisations, without any hollow but the heart,” 
or minute vertical tube formed at the axis of the cheese. 


*266 


MOBY DICK. 


As the least tangle or kink in the coiling would, in running 
out, infallibly take somebody’s arm, leg, or entire body off, 
the utmost precaution is used in stowing the line in its tub. 
Some harpooners will consume almost an entire morning 
in this business, carrying the line high aloft and then reev- 
ing it downwards through a block towards the tub, so as in 
the act of coiling to free it from all possible wrinkles and 
twists. 

In the English boats two tubs are used instead of one ; 
the same line being continuously coiled in both tubs. There 
is some advantage in this ; because these twin-tubs being 
so small they fit more readily into the boat, and do not strain 
it so much ; whereas, the American tub, nearly three feet 
in diameter and of proportionate depth, makes a rather 
bulky freight for a craft whose planks are but one half -inch 
in thickness ; for the bottom of the whale-boat is like criti- 
cal ice, which will bear up a considerable distributed weight, 
but not very much of a concentrated one. When the painted 
canvas cover is clapped on the American line-tub, the boat 
looks as if it were pulling off with a prodigious great wed- 
ding-cake to present to the whales. 

Both ends of the line are exposed; the lower end terminat- 
ing in an eye-splice or loop coming up from the bottom 
against the side of the tub, and hanging over its edge com- 
pletely disengaged from everything. This arrangement of 
the lower end is necessary on two accounts. First : In order 
to facilitate the fastening to it of an additional line from a 
neighbouring boat, in case the stricken whale should sound 
so deep as to threaten to carry off the entire line originally 
attached to the harpoon. In these instances, the whale of 
course is shifted like a mug of ale, as it were, from the one 
boat to the other ; though the first boat always hovers at 
hand to assist its consort. Second : This arrangement is 
indispensable for common safety’s sake ; for were the lower 
end of the line in any way attached to the boat, and were 
the whale then to run the line out to the end almost in a 
single, smoking minute as he sometimes does, he would not 
stop there, for the doomed boat would infallibly be dragged 
down after him into the profundity of the sea ; and in that 
case no town-crier would ever find her again. 

Before lowering the boat for the chase, the upper end of 
the line is taken aft from the tub, and passing round the 
loggerhead there, is again carried forward the entire length 
of the boat, resting crosswise upon the loom or handle of 


MOB Y DICK. 


267 


every man’s oar, so that it jogs against his wrist in rowing; 
and also passing between the men, as they alternately sit at 
the opposite gunwales, to the leaded chocks or grooves in 
the extreme pointed prow of the boat, where a wooden pin 
or skewer the size of a common quill, prevents it from slip- 
ping out. From the chocks it hangs in a slight festoon over 
the bows, and is then passed inside the boat again ; and 
some ten or twenty fathoms (called box-line) being coiled 
upon the box, in the bows, it continues its way to the gun- 
wale still a little further aft, and is then attached to the 
short- warp — the rope which is immediately connected with 
the harpoon ; but previous to that connection, the short- 
warp goes through sundry mystifications too tedious to 
detail. 

Thus the whale-line folds the whole boat in its compli- 
cated coils, twisting and writhing around it in almost every 
direction. All the oarsmen are involved in its perilous 
contortions ; so that to the timid eye of the landsman, they 
seem as Indian jugglers, with the deadliest snakes sportively 
festooning their limbs. Nor can any son of mortal woman, 
for the first time, seat himself amid those hempen' intrica- 
cies, and while straining his utmost at the oar, bethink him 
that at any unknown instant the harpoon may be darted, 
and all these horrible contortions be put in play like ringed 
lightnings ; he cannot be thus circumstanced without a 
shudder that makes the very marrow in his bones to quiver 
in him like a shaken jelly. Yet habit — strange thing ! 
what cannot habit accomplish ? — Gayer sallies, more merry 
mirth, better jokes, and brighter repartees, you never heard 
over your mahogany, than you will hear over the half-inch 
white cedar of the whale-boat, when thus hung in hang- 
man’s nooses ; and, like the six burghers of Calais before 
King Edward, the six men composing the crew pull into the 
jaws of death, with a halter around every neck, as you may 
say. 

Perhaps a very little thought will now enable you to ac- 
count for those repeated whaling disasters — some few of 
which are casually chronicled — of this man or that man 
being taken out of the boat by the line, and lost. For, 
when the line is darting out, to be seated then in the boat, 
is like being seated in the midst of the manifold whizzings 
of a steam-engine in full play, wdien every flying beam, 
and shaft, and wheel, is grazing you. It is worse ; for you 
cannot sit motionless in the heart of these perils, because 


268 


MOBY DICK. 


the boat is rocking like a cradle, and you are pitched one 
way and the other, without the slightest warning, and only 
by certain self-adjusting buoyancy and simultaneousness 
of volition and action, can you escape being made a Mazeppa 
of, and run away with where the all-seeing sun himself 
could never pierce you out. 

Again : as the profound calm which only apparently pre- 
cedes and prophesies of the storm, is perhaps more awful 
than the storm itself ; for, indeed, the calm is hut the wrap- 
per and envelope of the storm ; and contains it in itself, as 
the seemingly harmless rifle holds the fatal powder, and 
the hall, and the explosion ; so the graceful repose of the 
line, as it silently serpentines about the oarsmen before 
being brought into actual play — this is a thing which carries 
more of true terror than any other aspect of tljis dangerous 
affair. But why say more? All men live enveloped in 
whale-lines. All are born with halters round their necks ; 
but it is only when caught in the swift, sudden turn of death, 
that mortals realise the silent, subtle, ever-present perils of 
life. And if you be a philosopher, though seated in the 
whale-boat, you would not at heart feel one whit more of 
terror than though seated before your evening fire with a 
poker, and not a harpoon, by your side. 


CHAPTER LXI. 

STUBB KELLS A WHALE. 

If to Starbuck the apparition of the Squid was a thing 
of portents, to Queequeg it was quite a different object. 

“ When you see him ’quid,” said the savage, honing his 
harpoon in the bow of his hoisted boat, “ then you quick see 
him ’parm whale.” 

The next day was exceedingly still and sultry, and with 
nothing special to engage them, the Pequod’s crew could 
hardly resist the spell of sleep induced by such a vacant sea. 
For this part of the Indian Ocean through which we then 
were voyaging is not what whalemen call a lively ground ; 
that is, it affords fewer glimpses of porpoises, dolphins, 
flying-fish, and other vivacious denizens of more stirring 


MOBY DICK. 2G9 

waters, than those off the Rio de la Plata, or the in-shore 
ground off Peru. 

It was my turn to stand at the foremast-head ; and with 
my shoulders leaning against the slackened royal shrouds, 
to and fro I idly swayed in what seemed an enchanted air. 
No resolution could withstand it ; in that dreamy mood 
losing all consciousness, at last my soul went out of my 
body ; though my body still continued to sway as a pendu- 
lum will, long after the power which first moved it is with- 
drawn. 

Ere forgetfulness altogether came over me, I had noticed 
that the seamen at the main and mizzen-mast-heads were 
already drowsy. So that at last all three of us lifelessly 
swung from the spars, and for every swing that we made 
there was a nod from below from the slumbering helmsman. 
The waves, too, nodded their indolent crests ; and across 
the wide trance of the sea, east nodded to west, and the sun 
over all. 

Suddenly bubbles seemed bursting beneath my closed 
eyes ; like vices my hands grasped the shrouds ; some invis- 
ible, gracious agency preserved me ; with a shock I came 
back to life. And lo ! close under our lee, not forty fathoms 
off, a gigantic Sperm Whale lay rolling in the water like 
the capsized hull of a frigate, his broad, glossy back, of an 
Ethiopian hue, glistening in the sun’s rays like a mirror. 
But lazily undulating in the trough of the sea, and ever and 
anon tranquilly spouting his vapoury jet, the whale looked 
like a portly burgher smoking his pipe of a warm afternoon. 
But that pipe, poor whale, was thy last. As if struck by 
some enchanter’s wand, the sleepy ship and every sleeper 
in it all at once started into wakefulness ; and more than a 
score of voices from all parts of the vessel, simultaneously 
with the three notes from aloft, shouted forth the accus- 
tomed cry, as the great fish slowly and regularly spouted the 
sparkling brine into the air. 

“ Clear away the boats ! Luff ! ” cried Ahab. And obeying 
his own order, he dashed the helm down before the helms- 
man could handle the spokes. 

The sudden exclamations of the crew must have alarmed 
the whale ; and ere the boats were down, majestically turn- 
ing, he swam away to the leeward, but with such a steady 
tranquillity, and making so few ripples as he swam, that 
thinking after all he might not as yet be alarmed, Ahab 
gave orders that not an oar should be used, and no man 


270 


MOBY DICK. 


must speak but in whispers. So seated like Ontario Indians 
on the gunwales of the boats, we swiftly but silently paddled 
along ; the calm not admitting of the noiseless sails being 
set. Presently, as we thus glided in chase, the monster 
perpendicularly flitted his tail forty feet into the air, and 
then sank out of sight like a tower swallowed up. 

“ There go flukes ! ” was the cry, an announcement im- 
mediately followed by Stubb’s producing his match and 
igniting his pipe, for now a respite was granted. After the 
full interval of his sounding had elapsed, the whale rose 
again, and being now in advance of the smoker’s boat, and 
much nearer to it than to any of the others, Stubb counted 
upon the honour of the capture. It was obvious now, that 
the whale had at length become aware of his pursuers. All 
silence or cautiousness was therefore no longer of use. 
Paddles were dropped, and oars came loudly into play. 
And still puffing at his pipe, Stubb cheered on his crew to 
the assault. 

Yes, a mighty change had come over the fish. All alive 
to his jeopardy, he was going “head out;” that part 
obliquely projecting from the mad yeast which he brewed.* 

“ Start her, start her, my men ! Don’t hurry yourselves ; 
take plenty of time — but start her ; start her like thunder- 
claps, that’s all,” cried Stubb, spluttering out the smoke as 
he spoke. “ Start her, now ; give ’em the long and strong 
stroke, Tashtego. Start her, Task, my boy — start her, all ; 
but keep cool, keep cool — cucumbers is the word — easy, 
easy — only start her like grim death and grinning devils, 
and raise the buried dead perpendicular out of their graves, 
boys — that’s all. Start her ! ” 

“Woo-hoo! Wa-hee!” screamed the Gay-Header in 
reply, raising some old war-whoop to the skies ; as every 
oarsman in the strained boat involuntarily bounced forward 
with the one tremendous leading stroke which the eager 
Indian gave. 

But his wild screams were answered by others quite as 

•It will be seen in some other place of wliat a very light substance 
the entire interior of the sperm whale’ s enormous head consists. Though 
apparently the most massive, it is by far the most buoyant part about 
him. So that with ease he elevates it in the air, and invariably does 
so when going at his utmost speed. Besides, such is the breadth of the 
upper part of the front of his head, and such the tapering cut-water for- 
mation of the lower part, that by obliquely elevating his head, he there- 
by may be said to transform himself from a bluff-bowed sluggish galliot 
into a sharp-pointed New York pilot-boat. 


MOBY DICK. 


271 


wild. “ Kee-hee ! Ivee-hee ! ” yelled Daggoo, straining for- 
wards and backwards on his seat, like a pacing tiger in his 
cage. 

“ Ka-la ! Koo-loo ! ” howled Queequeg, as if smacking his 
lips over a mouthful of Grenadier’s steak. And thus with 
oars and yells the keels cut the sea. Meanwhile, Stubb 
retaining his place in the van, still encouraged his men to 
the onset, all the while puffing the smoke from his mouth. 
Like desperadoes they tugged and they strained, till the 
welcome cry was heard — “ Stand up, Tashtego ! — give it to 
him ! ” The harpoon was hurled. “ Stern all ! ” The oars- 
men backed water ; the same moment something went hot 
and hissing along every one of their wrists. It was the 
magical line. An instant before, Stubb had swiftly caught 
two additional turns with it round the loggerhead, whence, 
by reason of its increased rapid circlings, a hempen blue 
smoke now jetted up and mingled with the steady fumes 
from his pipe. As the line passed round and round the 
loggerhead ; so also, just before reaching that point, it 
blisteringly passed through and through both of Stubb’s 
hands, from which the hand-cloths, or squares of quilted 
canvas sometimes worn at these times, had accidentally 
dropped. It was like holding an enemy’s sharp two-edged 
sword by the blade, and that enemy all the time striving to 
wrest it out of your clutch. 

“Wet the line! wet the line!” cried Stubb to the tub 
oarsman (him seated by the tub) who, snatching off his hat, 
dashed the sea-water into it.* More turns were taken, so 
that the line began holding its place. The boat now flew 
through the boiling water like a shark all fins. Stubb and 
Tashtego here changed places — stem for stern — a stagger- 
ing business truly in that rocking commotion. 

From the vibrating line extending the entire length of 
the upper part of the boat, and from its now being more 
tight than a harpstring, you would have thought the craft 
had two keels — one cleaving the water, the other the air — 
as the boat churned on through both opposing elements at 
once. A continual cascade played at the bows ; a ceaseless 
whirling eddy in her wake; and, at the slightest motion 
from within, even but of a little finger, the vibrating, crack- 
le Partly to show the indispensableness of this act, it may here be 
stated, that, in the old Dutch fishery, a mop was used to dash * ' 
line with water; in many other ships, a wooden piggi" 
apart for that purpose. Your hat, however, is the 


272 


MOBY DICK. 


ing craft canted over her spasmodic gunwale into the sea. 
Thus they rushed : each man with might and main cling- 
ing to his seat, to prevent being tossed to the foam ; and the 
tall form of Tashtego at the steering oar crouching almost 
double, in order to bring down his centre of gravity. 
Whole Atlantics and Pacifies seemed passed as they shot on 
their way, till at length the whale somewhat slackened his 
flight. 

“ Haul in — haul in ! ” cried Stubb to the bowsman ! and, 
facing round towards the whale, all hands began pulling 
the boat up to him, while yet the boat was being towed 
on. Soon ranging up by his flank, Stubb, firmly planting 
his knee in the clumsy cleat, darted dart after dart into the 
flying fish ; at the word of command, the boat alternately 
sterning out of the way of the whale’s horrible wallow, and 
then ranging up for another fling. 

The red tide now poured from all sides of the monster 
like brooks down a hill. His tormented body rolled not in 
brine but in blood, which bubbled and seethed for furlongs 
behind in their wake. The slanting sun playing upon this 
crimson pond in the sea, sent back its reflection into every 
face, so that they all glowed to each other like red men. 
And all the while, jet after jet of white smoke was agonis- 
ingly shot from the spiracle of the whale, and vehement 
puff after puff from the mouth of the excited headsman ; as 
at every dart, hauling in upon his crooked lance (by the line 
attached to it), Stubb straightened it again and again by a 
few rapid blows against the gunwale, then again and again 
sent it into the whale. 

“ Pull up — pull up ! ” he now cried to the bowsman, as the 
waning whale relaxed in his wrath. “ Pull up ! — close to ! ” 
and the boat ranged along the fish’s flank. When reach- 
ing far over the bow, Stubb slowly churned his long sharp 
lance into the fish, and kept it there, carefully churning 
and churning, as if cautiously seeking to feel after some 
gold watch that the whale might have swallowed, and 
which he was fearful of breaking ere he could hook it out. 
But that gold watch he sought was the innermost life of the 
fish. And now it is struck ; for, starting from his trance 
into that unspeakable thing called his “ flurry,” the monster 
horribly wallowed in his blood, overwrapped himself in 
i^nenetrable, mad, boiling spray, so that the imperilled 
”'tly dropping astern, had much ado blindly to 
t that phrensied twilight into the clear air 


MOBY DICK. 


273 


And now abating in his flurry, the whale once more rolled 
out into view ; surging from side to side ; spasmodically dilat- 
ing and contracting his spout-hole, with sharp, cracking, ago- 
nised respirations. At last, gush after gush of clotted red 
gore, as if it had been the purple lees of red wine, shot into 
the frighted air ; and falling back again, ran dripping down 
his motionless flanks into the sea. His heart had burst ! 

“ He’s dead, Mr. Stubb,” said Daggoo. 

“ Yes ; both pipes smoked out ! ” and withdrawing his own 
from his mouth, Stubb scattered the dead ashes over the 
water ; and, for a moment, stood thoughtfully eyeing the 
vast corpse he had made. 


CHAPTER LXII. 

THE DART. 

A word concerning an incident in the last chapter. 

According to the invariable usage of the fishery, the 
whaleboat pushes off from the ship, with the headsman or 
whale-killer as temporary steersman, and the harpooner or 
whale-fastener pulling the foremost oar the one known as 
the harpooner-oar. Now it needs a strong, nervous arm to 
strike the first iron into the fish ; for often, in what is called 
a long dart, the heavy implement has to be flung to the 
distance of twenty or thirty feet. But however prolonged 
and exhausting the chase, the harpooner is expected to 
pull his oar meanwhile to the uttermost ; indeed, he is ex- 
pected to set an example of superhuman activity to the 
rest, not only by incredible rowing, but by repeated loud 
and intrepid exclamations ; and what it is to keep shouting 
at the top of one’s compass, while all the other muscles 
are strained and half started — what that is none know but 
those who have tried it. For one, I cannot bawl very 
heartily and work very recklessly at one and the same 
time. In this straining, bawling state, then, with his back 
to the fish, all at once the exhausted harpooner hears the 
exciting cry — “ Stand up, and give it to him ! ” He now 
has to drop and secure his oar, turn round on his centre half 
way, seize his harpoon from the crotch, and with what little 


274 


MOBY DICK. 


strength may remain, he essays to pitch it somehow into 
the whale. No wonder, taking the whole fleet of whalemen 
in a body, that out of fifty fair chances for a dart, not five 
are successful ; no wonder that so many hapless harpooners 
are madly cursed and disrated ; no wonder that some of 
them actually burst their blood-vessels in the boat ; no 
wonder that some sperm whalemen are absent four years 
with four barrels ; no wonder that to many ship owners, 
whaling is but a losing concern ; for it is the harpooner 
that makes the voyage, and if you take the breath out of his 
body how can you expect to find it there when most wanted ! 

Again, if the dart be successful, then at the second 
critical instant, that is, when the whale starts to run, the 
boat-header and harpooner likewise start to running . fore 
and aft to the imminent jeopardy of themselves and every 
one else. It is then they change places ; and the headsman, 
the chief officer of the little craft, takes his proper station 
in the bows of the boat. 

Now, I care not who maintains the contrary, but all this 
is both foolish and unnecessary. The headsman should 
stay in the bows from first to last ; he should both dart the 
harpoon and the lance, and no rowing whatever should be 
expected of him except under circumstances obvious to any 
fisherman. I know that this would sometimes involve a 
slight loss of speed in the chase ; but long experience in 
various whalemen of more than one nation has convinced 
me that in the vast majority of failures in the fishery, it has 
not by any means been so much the speed of the whale as 
the before described exhaustion of the harpooner that has 
caused them. 

To insure the greatest efficiency in the dart, the harpoon- 
ers of this world must start to their feet from out of idle- 
ness, and not from out of toil. 


MOB Y DICK. 


275 


\ 

CHAPTER LXIII. 

THE CROTCH. 

Out of the trunk, the branches grow ; out of them, the 
twigs. So, in productive subjects, grow the chapters. 

The crotch alluded to on a previous page deserves inde- 
pendent mention. It is a notched stick of a peculiar form, 
some two feet in length, which is perpendicularly inserted 
into the starboard gunwale near the bow, for the purpose 
of furnishing a rest for the wooden extremity of the harpoon, 
whose other naked, barbed end slopingly projects from the 
prow. Thereby the weapon is instantly at hand to its 
hurler, who snatches it up as readily from its rest as a 
backwoodsman swings his rifle from the wall. It is custom- 
ary to have two harpoons reposing in the crotch, respect- 
ively called the first and second irons. 

But these two harpoons, each by its own cord, are both 
connected with the line ; the object being this : to dart them 
both, if possible, one instantly after the other into the same 
whale ; so that if, in the coming drag, one should draw out, 
the other may still retain a hold. It is a doubling of the 
chances. But it very often happens that owing to the in- 
stantaneous, violent, convulsive running of the whale upon 
receiving the first iron, it becomes impossible for the har- 
pooner, however lightning-like in his movements, to pitch 
the second iron into him. Nevertheless, as the second iron 
is already connected with the line, and the line is running, 
hence that weapon must, at all events, be anticipatingly 
tossed out of the boat, somehow and somewhere ; else the 
most terrible jeopardy would involve all hands. Tumbled 
into the water, it accordingly is in such cases ; the spare 
coils of box line (mentioned in a preceding chapter) making 
this feat, in most instances, prudently practicable. But 
this critical act is not always unattended with the saddest 
and most fatal casualties. 

Furthermore : you must know that when the second iron 
is thrown overboard, it thenceforth becomes a dangling, 
sharp-edged terror, skittishly curveting about both boat 
and whale, entangling the lines, or cutting them, and mak- 


276 


MOBY DICK. 


ing a prodigious sensation in all directions. Nor, in gen- 
eral, is it possible to secure it again until the whale is fairly 
captured and a corpse. 

Consider, now, how it must be in the case of four boats 
all engaging one unusually strong, active, and knowing 
whale ; when owing to these qualities in him, as well as to 
the thousand concurring accidents of such an audacious en- 
terprise, eight or ten loose second irons may be simultaneously 
dangling about him. For, of course, each boat is supplied 
with several harpoons to bend on to the line should the first 
one be ineffectually darted without recovery. All these par- 
ticulars are faithfully narrated here, as they will not fail to 
elucidate several most important, however intricate pass- 
ages, in scenes hereafter to be painted. 


CHAPTER LXIY. 
stubb’s supper. 

Stubb’s whale had been killed some distance from the 
ship. It was a calm ; so, forming a tandem of three boats, 
we commenced the slow business of towing the trophy to 
the Pequod. And now, as we eighteen men with our thirty- 
six arms, and one hundred and eighty thumbs and fingers, 
slowly toiled hour after hour upon that inert, sluggish 
corpse in the sea ; and it seemed hardly to budge at all, ex- 
cept at long intervals ; good evidence was hereby furnished 
of the enormousness of the mass we moved. For, upon 
the great canal of Hang-Ilo, or whatever they call it, in 
China, four or five labourers on the foot-path will draw a 
bulky freighted junk at the rate of a mile an hour ; but this 
grand argosy we towed heavily forged along, as if laden 
with pig-lead in bulk. 

Darkness came on ; but three lights up and down in the 
Pequod’s main-rigging dimly guided our way ; till drawing 
nearer we saw Ahab dropping one of several more lanterns 
over the bulwarks. Vacantly eyeing the heaving whale for 
a moment, he issued the usual orders for securing it for the 
night, and then handing his lantern to a seaman, went his 
way into the cabin, and did not come forward again until 
morning. 


MOBY DICK. 


277 


Though, in overseeing the pursuit of this whale, Captain 
Ahab had evinced his customary activity, to call it so ; yet 
now that the creature was dead, some vague dissatisfaction, 
or impatience, or despair, seemed working in him ; as if the 
sight of that dead body reminded him that Moby Dick was 
yet to be slain ; and though a thousand other whales were 
brought to his ship, all that would not one jot advance his 
grand, monomaniac object. Very soon you would have 
thought from the sound on the Pequod’s decks, that all 
hands were preparing to cast anchor in the deep; for 
heavy chains are being dragged along the deck, and thrust 
rattling out of the port-holes. But by those clanking links, 
the vast corpse itself, not the ship, is to be moored. Tied 
by the head to the stern, and by the tail to the bows, the 
whale now lies with its black hull close to the vessel’s and 
seen through the darkness of the night, which obscured the 
spars and rigging aloft, the two — ship and whale, seemed 
yoked together like colossal bullocks, whereof one reclines 
while the other remains standing.* 

If moody Ahab was now all quiescence, at least so far as 
could be known on deck, Stubb, his second mate, flushed 
with conquest, betrayed an unusual but still good-natured 
excitement. Such an unwonted bustle was he in that the 
staid Starbuck, his official superior, quietly resigned to 
him for the time the sole management of affairs. One 
small, helping cause of all this liveliness in Stubb was soon 
made strangely manifest. Stubb was a high liver ; he was 
somewhat intemperately fond of the whale as a flavourish 
thing to his palate. 

“A steak, a steak, ere I sleep! You, Daggoo ! over- 
board you go, and cut me one from his small ! ” 

Here be it known, that though these wild fishermen do 

* A little item may as well be related here. The strongest and most 
reliable hold which the ship has upon the whale when moored along- 
side, is by the flukes or tail ; and as from its greater density that part 
is relatively heavier than any other (excepting the side-fins), its flexibil- 
ity even in death, causes it to sink low beneath the surface; so that 
with the hand you cannot get at it from the boat, in order to put the 
chain round it. But this difficulty is ingeniously, overcome : a small, 
stron" line is prepared with a wooden float at its outer end, and a 
weight in its middle, while the other end is secured to the ship. By 
adroit management the wooden float is made to rise on the other side 
of the mass, so that now having girdled the whale, the chain is readily 
made to follow suit; and being slipped along the body, is at last locked 
fast round the smallest part of the tail, at the point of junction with 
its broad flukes or lobes. 


278 


MOBY DICK. 


not, as a general thing, and according to the great military 
maxim, make the enemy defray the current expenses of the 
war (at least before realising the proceeds of the voyage), 
yet now and then you find some of these Nantucketers who 
have a genuine relish for that particular part of the Sperm 
Whale designated by Stub!) ; comprising the tapering ex- 
tremity of the body. 

About midnight that steak was cut and cooked; and 
lighted by two lanterns of Sperm oil, Stubb stoutly stood 
up to his spermaceti supper at the capstan-head, as if that 
capstan were a sideboard. Nor was Stubb the only ban- 
queter on whale’s flesh that night. Mingling their mum- 
blings with his own mastications, thousands on thousands 
of sharks, swarming round the dead leviathan, smackingly 
feasted on its fatness. The few sleepers below in their 
bunks were often startled by the sharp slapping of their 
tails against the hull, within a few inches of the sleepers’ 
hearts. Peering over the side you could just see them (as 
before you heard them) wallowing in the sullen, black 
waters, and turning over on their backs as they scooped out 
huge globular pieces of the whale of the bigness of a human 
head. This particular feat of the shark seems all but 
miraculous. How, at such an apparently unassailable sur- 
face, they contrive to gouge out such symmetrical mouth- 
fuls, remains a part of the universal problem of all things. 
The mark they thus leave on the whale may best be 
likened to the hollow made by a carpenter in countersink- 
ing for a screw. 

Though amid all the smoking horror and diabolism of a 
sea-fight, sharks will be seen longingly gazing up to the 
ship’s decks, like hungry dogs round a table where red 
meat is being carved, ready to bolt down every killed man 
that is tossed to them; and though, while the valiant 
butchers over the deck-table are thus cannibally carving 
each other’s life meat with carving-knives all gilded and 
tasselled, the sharks, also, with their jewel-hilted mouths, 
are quarrelsomely .carving away under the table at the dead 
meat ; and though, were you to turn the whole affair up- 
side down, it would still be pretty much the same thing, 
that is to say, a shocking sharkish business enough for all 
parties; and though sharks also are the invariable out- 
riders of all slave ships crossing the Atlantic, systemati- 
cally trotting alongside, to be handy in case a parcel is to 
be carried anywhere, or a dead slave to be decently buried ; 


MOBY DICK. 


279 


and though one or two other like instances might he set 
down, touching the set terms, places, and occasions, when 
sharks do most socially congregate, and most hilariously 
feast ; yet is there no conceivable time or occasion when 
you will find them in such countless numbers, and in gayer 
or more jovial spirits, than around a dead sperm whale, 
moored by night to a whale-ship at sea. If you have never 
seen that sight, then suspend your decision about the pro- 
priety of devil-worship, and the expediency of conciliating 
the devil. 

But, as yet, Stubb heeded not the mumblings of the banquet 
that was going on so nigh him, no more than the sharks 
heeded the smacking of his own epicurean lips. 

“ Cook, cook ! — where’s that old Fleece? ” he cried at length, 
widening his legs still further, as if to form a more secure 
base for his supper ; and, at the same time darting his fork 
into the dish, as if stabbing with his lance ; “ cook, you cook ! 
— sail this way, cook ! ” 

The old black, not in any very high glee at having been 
previously roused from his warm hammock at a most un- 
seasonable hour, came shambling along from his galley, for, 
like many old blacks, there was something the matter with 
his knee-pans, which he did not keep well scoured like his 
other pans ; this old Fleece, as they called him, came shuf- 
fling and limping along, assisting his step with his tongs, 
which, after a clumsy fashion, were made of straightened 
iron hoops ; this old Ebony floundered along, and in obedi- 
ence to the word of command, came to a dead stop on the 
opposite side of Stubb’ s sideboard ; when, with both hands 
folded before him, and resting on his two-legged cane, he 
bowed his arched back still further over, at the same time 
sideways inclining his head, so as to bring his best ear into 
play. 

“ Cook,” said Stubb, rapidly lifting a rather reddish 
morsel to his mouth, “don’t you think this steak is rather 
overdone ? You’ve been beating this steak too much, cook ; 
it’s too tender. Don’t I always say that to be good, a 
whale-steak must be tough ? There are those sharks now 
over the side, don’t you see they prefer it tough and rare ? 
What a shindy they are kicking up ! Cook, go and talk to 
’em ; tell ’em they are welcome to help themselves civilly, 
and in moderation, but they must keep quiet. Blast me, if 
I can hear my own voice. Away, cook, and deliver my 


280 


MOBY DICK. 


message. Here, take this lantern,” snatching one from his 
sideboard ; “now then, go and preach to ’em ! ” 

Sullenly taking the offered lantern, old Fleece limped 
across the deck to the bulwarks ; and then, with one hand 
dropping his light low over the sea, so as to get a good view 
of his congregation, with the other hand he solemnly 
flourished his tongs, and leaning far over the side in a 
mumbling voice began addressing the sharks, while Stubb, 
softly crawding behind, overheard all that was said. 

“ Fellow- critters : I’se ordered here to say dat you must 
stop dat dam noise dare. You hear? Stop dat dam smakin’ 
ob de lip ! Massa Stubb say dat you can fill your dam 
bellies up to de hatchings, but by Gor ! you must stop dat 
dam racket ! ” 

“ Cook,” here mterposed Stubb, accompanying the word 
with a sudden slap on the shoulder, — “ Cook ! why damn 
your eyes, you mustn’t swear that way when you’re preach- 
ing. That’s no way to convert sinners, cook ! ” 

“ Who dat ? Den preach to him yourself,” sullenly turn- 
ing to go. 

“ No, cook ; go on, go on.” 

“ Well, den, Belubed fellow-critters : ” — 

“ Right ! ” exclaimed Stubb, approvingly, “ coax ’em to 
it ; try that,” and Fleece continued. 

“ Do you is all sharks, and by natur wery woracious, yet 
I zay to you, fellow-critters, dat dat woraciousness — ’top 
dat dam slappin’ ob de tail ! How you tink to hear, spose 
you keep up such a dam slappin’ and bitin’ dare ? ” 

“ Cook,” cried Stubb, collaring him, “ I won’t have that 
swearing. Talk to ’em gentlemanly.” 

Once more the sermon proceeded. 

“ Your woraciousness, fellow-critters, I don’t blame ye so 
much for ; dat is natur, and can’t be helped ; but to gobern 
dat wicket natur, dat is de pint. You is sharks, sartin; 
but if you gobern de shark in you, why den you be angel ; 
for all angel is not’ing more dan de shark well goberned. 
Now, look here, bred’ren, just try wonst to be cibil, a help- 
ing yourselves from dat whale. Don’t be tearin’ de blubber 
out your neighbour’s mout, I say. Is not one shark dood 
right as toder to dat whale ? And, by Gor, none on you has 
de right to dat whale ; dat whale belong to someone else. 
I know some o’ you has berry brig mout, brigger dan oders; 
but den de brig mouts sometimes has de small bellies ; so 
dat de brigness ob de mout is not to swaller wid, but to 


MOBY DICK. 


281 


bite off de blubber for de small fry ob sharks, dat can’t get 
into de scrouge to help demselves.” 

“Well done, old Fleece!” cried Stubb, “that’s Christi- 
anity ; go on.” 

“No use goin’ on; de dam willains will keep a scourgin’ 
and slappin’ each oder, Massa Stubb ; dey don’t hear one 
word ; no use a-preachin’ to such dam g’uttons as you call 
’em, till dare bellies is full, and dare bellies is bottomless ; 
and when dey do get em full, dey won’t hear you den ; for 
den dey sink in de sea, go fast to sleep on de coral, and can’t 
hear not’ing at all, no more, for eber and eber.” 

“ Upon my soul, I am about of the same opinion ; so give 
the benediction, Fleece, and I’ll away to my supper.” 

Upon this, Fleece, holding both hands over the fishy mob, 
raised his shrill voice, and cried — 

“ Cussed fellow-critters ! Kick up de damndest row as 
ever you can; fill your dam bellies ’till dey bust — and den 
die.” 

“ Now, cook,” said Stubb, resuming his supper at the 
capstan ; “ stand just where you stood before, there, over 
against me, and pay particular attention.” 

“ All dention,” said Fleece, again stooping over upon his 
tongs in the desired position. 

“Well,” said Stubb, helping himself freely meanwhile ; 
“ I shall now go back to the subject of this steak. In the 
first place, how old are you, cook ? ” 

“ What dat do wid de ’teak,” said the old black, testily. 

“ Silence ! How old are you, cook ? ” 

“’Bout ninety, dey say,” he gloomily muttered. 

“ And have you lived in this world hard upon one hundred 
years, cook, and don’t know yet how to cook a whale-steak ?” 
rapidly bolting another mouthful at the last word, so that 
that morsel seemed a continuation of the question. “ Where 
were you born, cook ? ” 

“’blind de hatchway, in ferry-boat, goin’ ober de Roa- 
noke.” 

“ Born in a ferry-boat ! That’s queer, too. But I want 
to know what country you were born in, cook ? ” 

“ Didn’t 1 say de Roanoke country ? ” he cried, sharply. 

“ No, you didn’t, cook; but I’ll tell you what I’m coming 
to, cook. You must go home and be born over again ; you 
don’t know how to cook a whale-steak yet.” 

“ Bress my soul, if I cook noder one,” he growled, angrily, 
turning round to depart. 


282 


MOBY DICK. 


“ Come back, cook ; — here, hand me those tongs ; — now 
take that bit of steak there, and tell me if yon think that 
steak cooked as it should be ? Take it, I say ” — holding the 
tongs towards him — “ take it, and taste it.” 

Faintly smacking his withered lips over it for a moment, 
the old negro muttered, “ Best cooked ’teak I eber taste ; 
joosy, berry joosy.” 

“ Cook,” said Stubb, squaring himself once more ; “ do you 
belong to the church ? ” 

“ Passed one once in Cape-Down,” said the old man sul- 
lenly. 

“ And you have once in your life passed a holy church in 
Cape-Town, where you doubtless overheard a holy parson 
addressing his hearers as his beloved fellow-creatures, have 
you, cook I And yet you come here, and tell me such a dread- 
ful lie as you did just now, eh ? ” said Stubb. “ Where do 
you expect to go to, cook ? ” 

“Go to bed berry soon,” he mumbled, half- turning as he 
spoke. 

“ Avast ! heave to 1 I mean when you die, cook. It’s an 
awful question. Now what’s your answer ?” 

“ When dis old brack man dies,” said the negro, slowly, 
changing his whole air and demeanour, “he hisself won’t go 
nowhere ; but somebressed angel will come and fetch him.” 

“ Fetch him ? How ? In a coach and four, as they fetched 
Elijah ? And fetch him where ? ” 

“ Up dere,” said Fleece, holding his tongs straight over 
his head, and keeping it there very solemnly. 

“ So, then, you expect to go up into our main-top, do you, 
cook, when you are dead ? But don’t you know the higher 
you climb, the colder it gets ? Main-top eh ? ” 

“ Didn’t say dat Fall,” said Fleece, again in the sulks. 

“ Y ou said up there, didn’t you ? and now look yourself, and 
see where your tongs are pointing. But, perhaps you ex- 
pect to get into heaven by crawling through the lubber’s hole, 
cook ; but, no, no, cook, you don’t get there, except you go 
the regular way, round by the rigging. It’s a ticklish busi- 
ness, but must be done, or else it’s no go. But none of us 
are in heaven yet. Drop your tongs, cook, and hear my 
orders. Do ye hear ? Hold your hat in one hand, and clap 
t’other a’top of your heart, when I’m giving my orders, cook. 
What ! that your heart, there ? — that’s your gizzard ! Aloft ! 
aloft !— that’s it— now you have it. Hold it there now, and 
pay attention.” 


MOBY DICK. 


283 


“ All ’dention,” said the old black, with both hands placed 
as desired, vainly wriggling his grizzled head, as if to get 
both ears in front at one and the same time. 

“ Well then, cook, you see this whale-steak of yours was 
so very bad, that I have put it out of sight as soon as pos- 
sible ; you see that, don’t you ? W ell, for the future, when 
you cook another whale-steak for my private table here, the 
capstan, I’ll tell you what to do so as not to spoil it by over- 
doing. Hold the steak in one hand, and show a live coal to 
it with the other ; that done, dish it ; d’ye hear ? And now 
to-morrow, cook, when we are cutting in the fish, be sure 
you stand by to get the tips of his fins ; have them put in 
pickle. As for the ends of the flukes, have them soused, 
cook. There, now ye may go.” 

But Fleece had hardly got three paces off, when he was 
recalled. 

“ Cook, give me cutlets for supper to-morrow night in the 
mid- watch. D’ye hear ? away you sail, then. — Halloa ! stop ! 
make a bow before you go. — Avast heaving again ! Whale- 
balls for breakfast — don’t forget.” 

“ Wish, by gor ! whale eat him, ’stead of him eat whale. 
I’m bressed if he ain’t more of shark dan Massa Shark his- 
self,” muttered the old man, limping away: with which 
sage ejaculation he went to his hammock. 


CHAPTER LXV. 

THE WHALE AS A DISH. 

That mortal man should feed upon the creature that 
feeds his lamp, and, like Stubb, eat him by his own light, 
as you may say ; this seems so outlandish a thing that one 
must needs go a little into the history and philosophy of 
it. 

It is upon record, that three centuries ago the tongue of 
the Right Whale was esteemed a great delicacy in France, 
and commanded large prices there. Also, that in Henry 
VTIIth’s time, a certain cook of the court obtained a hand- 
some reward for inventing an admirable sauce to be eaten 
with barbacued porpoises, which, you remember, are a 


284 


MOBY DICK. 


species of whale. Porpoises, indeed, are to this day con- 
sidered fine eating. The meat is made into halls about the 
size of billiard balls, and being well seasoned and spiced 
might be taken for turtle-balls or veal balls. The old 
monks of Dunfermline were very fond of them. They had 
a great porpoise grant from the crown. 

The fact is, that among his hunters at least, the whale 
would by all hands be considered a noble dish, were there 
not so much of him ; but when you come to sit down be- 
fore a meat-pie nearly one hundred feet long, it takes away 
your appetite. Only the most unprejudiced of men like 
Stubb, nowadays partake of booked whales ; but the Esqui- 
maux are not so fastidious. We all know how they live 
upon whales, and have rare old vintages of prime old train 
oil. Zogranda, one of their most famous doctors, recom- 
mends strips of blubber for infants, as being exceedingly 
juicy and nourishing. And this reminds me that certain 
Englishmen, who long ago were accidentally left in Green- 
land by a whaling vessel — that these men actually lived 
for several months on the mouldy scraps of whales which 
had been left ashore after trying out the blubber. Among 
the Dutch whalemen these scraps are called “ fritters ; ” 
which, indeed, they greatly resemble, being brown and 
crisp, and smelling something like old Amsterdam house- 
wives’ doughnuts or oly-cooks, when fresh. They have 
such an eatable look that the most self-denying stranger 
can hardly keep his hands off. 

But what further depreciates the whale as a civilised 
dish, is his exceeding richness. He is the great prize ox 
of the sea, too fat to be delicately good. Look at his hump 
which would be as fine eating as the buffalo’s (which is es- 
teemed a rare dish), were it not such a solid pyramid of 
fat. But the spermaceti itself, how bland and creamy that 
is ; like the transparent, half-jellied white meat of a cocoa- 
nut in the third month of its growth, yet far too rich to 
supply a substitute for butter. Nevertheless, many whale- 
men have a method of absorbing it into some other sub- 
stance, and then partaking of it. In the long try watches 
of the night it is a common thing for the seamen to dip 
their ship-biscuit into the huge oil-pots and let them fry 
there awhile. Many a good supper have I thus made. 

In the case of a small sperm whale the brains are ac- 
counted a fine dish. The casket of the skull is broken into 
with an axe, and the two plump, whitish lobes being with- 


MOBY DICK. 


285 


drawn (precisely resembling two large puddings), they are 
then mixed with flour, and cooked into a most delectable 
mess, in flavour somewhat resembling calves’ head, which is 
quite a dish among some epicures ; and every one knows 
that some young bucks among the epicures, by continually 
dining upon calves’ brains, by and by get to have a little 
brains of their own, so as to be able to tell a carf’s head 
from their own heads ; which, indeed, requires uncommon 
discrimination. And that is the reason why a young buck 
with an intelligent looking calf’s head before him, is some- 
how one of the saddest sights you can see. The head looks 
a sort of reproachfully at him, with an “ Et tu Brute ! ” 
expression. 

It is not, perhaps, entirely because the whale is so exces- 
sively unctuous that landsmen seem to regard the eating 
of him with abhorrence; that appears to result, in some 
way, from the consideration before mentioned, i. e., that a 
man should eat a newly murdered thing of the sea, and eat 
it too by its own light. But no doubt the first man that 
ever murdered an ox was regarded as a murderer ; perhaps 
he was hung ; and if he had been put on his trial by oxen, 
he certainly would have been ; and he certainly deserved 
it if any murderer does. Go to the meat-market of a Sat- 
urday night and see the crowds of live bipeds staring up 
at the long rows of dead quadrupeds. Does not that sight 
take a tooth out of the cannibal’s jaw? Cannibals? who is 
not a cannibal ? I tell you it will be more tolerable for the 
Fejee that salted down a lean missionary in his cellar 
against a coming famine ; it will be more tolerable for that 
provident Fejee, I say, in the day of judgment, than for 
thee, civilized and enlightened gourmand, who nailest geese 
to the ground and feastest on their bloated livers in thy 
pate-de-foie-gras. 

But Stubb, he eats the whale by its own light, does he ? 
and that is adding insult to injury, is it ? Look at your 
knife-handle, there, my civilized and enlightened gourmand 
dining off that roast beef, what is that handle made of? — 
what but the bones of the brother of the very ox you are 
eating? And what do you pick your teeth with, after de- 
vouring that fat goose? With a feather of the same fowl. 
And with what quill did the Secretary of the Society for 
the Suppression of Cruelty to Ganders formally indite his 
circulars ? It is only within the last month or two that 
that society passed a resolution to patronise nothing but 
steel pens. 


286 


MOBY DICK. 


CHAPTER LXYI. 

THE SHARK MASSACRE. 

When in the Southern Fishery, a captured sperm whale, 
after long and weary toil, is brought alongside late at night, 
it is not, as a general thing at least, customary to proceed 
at once to the business of cutting him in. For that business 
is an exceedingly laborious one ; is not very soon completed ; 
and requires all hands to set about it. Therefore, the com- 
mon usage is to take in all sail ; lash the helm a’lee ; and 
then send every one below to his hammock till daylight, 
with the reservation that, until that time, anchor- watches 
shall be kept ; that is, two and two for an hour, each cou- 
ple, the crew in rotation shall mount the deck to see that 
all goes well. 

But sometimes, especially upon the Line in the Pacific, 
this plan will not answer at all ; because such incalculable 
hosts of sharks gather round the moored carcase, thatw T ere 
he left so for six hours, say, on a stretch, little more than 
the skeleton would be visible by morning. In most other 
parts of the ocean, however, where these fish do not so 
largely abound, their wondrous voracity can be at times 
considerably diminished, by vigorously stirring them up 
with sharp whaling-spades, a procedure notwithstanding, 
which, in some instances, only seems to tickle them into 
still greater activity. But it was not thus in the present 
case with the Pequod’s sharks; though, to be sure, any 
man unaccustomed to such sights, to have looked over her 
side that night, would have almost thought the whole 
round sea was one huge cheese, and those sharks the mag- 
gots in it. 

Nevertheless, upon Stubb setting the anchor- watch after 
his supper was concluded ; and when, accordingly, Quee- 
queg and a forecastle seaman came on deck, no small excite- 
ment was created among the sharks ; for immediately sus- 
pending the cutting stages over the side, and lowering 
three lanterns, so that they cast long gleams of light over 
the turbid sea, these two mariners, darting their long whal- 


MOBY DICK. 


*287 


ing-spades, kept up an incessant murdering of the sharks,* 
by striking the keen steel deep into their skulls, seemingly 
their only vital part. But in the foamy confusion of their 
mixed and struggling hosts, the marksmen could not al- 
ways hit their mark ; and this brought about new revela- 
tions of the incredible ferocity of the foe. They viciously 
snapped, not only at each other’s disembowelments, but like 
flexible bows, bent round, and bit their own ; till those en- 
trails seemed swallowed over and over again by the same 
mouth, to be oppositely voided by the gaping wound. Nor 
was this all. It was unsafe to meddle with the corpses 
and ghosts of these creatures. A sort of generic or Pan- 
theistic vitality seemed to lurk in their very joints and 
bones, after what might be called the individual life had 
departed. Killed and hoisted on deck for the sake of his 
skin, one of these sharks almost took poor Queequeg’s hand 
off, when he tried to shut down the dead lid of his murder- 
ous jaw. 

“Queequeg no care what god made him shark,” said the 
savage, agonisingly lifting his hand up and down ; “ wedder 
Fejee gad or Nantuket god ; but de god wat made shark 
must be one dam Ingin.” 


CHAPTER LXVII. 

CUTTING IN. 

It was a Saturday night, and such a Sabbath as followed ! 
Ex-officio professors of Sabbath breaking are all whalemen, 
The ivory Pequod was turned into what seemed a shamble ; 
every sailor a butcher. You would have thought we were 
offering up ten thousand red oxen to the sea gods. 

In the first place, the enormous cutting tackles, among 
other ponderous things comprising a cluster of blocks 

* The whaling-spade used for cutting-in is made of the very best steel ; 
is about the bigness of a man’s spread hand ; and in general shape cor- 
responds to the garden implement after which it is named ; only its 
sides are perfectly flat, and its upper end considerably narrower than 
the lower. This weapon is always kept as sharp as possible ; and when 
being used is occasionally honed, just like a razor. In its socket, a 
stiff pole, from twenty to thirty feet long, is inserted for a handle. 


288 


MOBY DICK . 


generally painted green, and which no single man can 
possibly lift— this vast bunch of grapes was swayed up to 
the main-top and firmly lashed to the lower mast-head, the 
strongest point anywhere above a ship’s deck. The end of 
the hawser-like rope winding through these intricacies, was 
then conducted to the windlass, and the huge lower block 
of the tackles was swung over the whale ; to this block the 
great blubber hook, weighing some one hundred pounds, 
was attached. And now suspended in stages over the side, 
Starbuck and Stubb, the mates, armed with their long 
spades, began cutting a hole in the body for the insertion 
of the hook just above the nearest of the two side-fins. * 
This done, a broad, semicircular line is cut round the hole, 
the hook is inserted, and the main body of the crew strik- 
ing up a wild chorus, now commence heaving in one dense 
crowd at the windlass. When instantly, the entire ship 
careens over on her side ; every bolt in her starts like 
the nail-heads of an old house in frosty weather ; she 
trembles, quivers, and nods her frighted mast-heads to 
the sky. More and more she leans over to the whale, 
while every gasping heave of the windlass is answered by 
a helping heave from the billows ; till at last, a swift, 
startling snap is heard ; with a great swash the ship rolls 
upwards and backwards from the whale, and the tri- 
umphant tackle rises into sight dragging after it the dis- 
engaged semicircular end of the first strip of blubber. 
Now as the blubber envelopes the whale precisely as the 
rind does an orange, so is it stripped off from the body 
precisely as an orange is sometimes stripped by spiralising 
it. For the strain constantly kept up by the windlass 
continually keeps the whale rolling over and over in the 
water, and as the blubber in one strip uniformly peels off 
along the line called the “scarf,” simultaneously cut by 
the spades of Starbuck and Stubb, the mates ; and just as 
fast as it is thus peeled off, and indeed by that very act 
itself, it is all the time being hoisted higher and higher 
aloft till its upper end grazes the main-top ; the men at the 
windlass then cease heaving, and for a moment or two the 
prodigious blood-dripping mass sways to and fro as if let 
down from the sky, and every one present must take good 
heed to dodge it when it swings, else it may box his ears 
and pitch him headlong overboard. 

One of the attending harpooners now advances with a 
long, keen weapon called a boarding-sword, and watching 


MOBY DICK. 


289 


his chance foe dexterously slices out a considerable hole in 
the lower pdrt of the swaying mass. Into this hole, the 
end of the second alternating great tackle is then hooked 
so as to retail a hold upon the blubber, in order to prepare 
for what follows. Whereupon, this accomplished swords- 
man, warning ^11 hands to stand off, once more makes a 
scientific dash at the mass, and with a few sidelong, des- 
perate, lunging Splicings, severs it completely in twain; so 
that while the short lower part is still fast, the long upper 
strip, called a blanket-piece, swings clear, and is all ready 
for lowering. The heavers forward now resume their song, 
and while the one tackle is peeling and hoisting a second 
strip from the whale, the other is slowly slackened away, 
and down goes the first strip through the main hatchway 
right beneath, into an unfurnished parlour called the blub- 
ber-room. Into this twilight apartment sundry nimble 
hands keep coiling away the long blanket-piece as if it were 
a great live mass of plaited serpents. And thus the work 
proceeds ; the two tackles hoisting and lowering simulta- 
neously; both whale and windlass heaving, the heavers 
singing, the blubber-room gentlemen coiling, the mates 
scarfing, the ship straining, and all hands swearing occa- 
sionally, by way of assuaging the general friction. 


CHAPTER LXVIII. 

THE BLANKET. 

I have given no small attention to that not un vexed sub- 
ject, the skin of the whale. I have had controversies about 
it with experienced whalemen afloat, and learned natural- 
ists ashore. My original opinion remains unchanged ; but 
it is only an opinion. 

The question is, what and where is the skin of the whale ? 
Already you know what his blubber is. That blubber is 
something of the consistence of firm, close-grained beef, 
but tougher, more elastic and compact, and ranges from 
eight or ten to twelve and fifteen inches in thickness. 

Now, however preposterous it may at first seem to talk 
of any creature’s skin as being of that sort of consistence 

19 


290 


MOBY DICK. 


and thickness, yet in point of fact these are np arguments 
against such a presumption ; because you cannot raise any 
other dense enveloping layer from the whale’s body but 
that same blubber ; and the outermost enveloping layer of 
any animal, if reasonably dense, what can that be but the 
skin ? True, from the unmarred dead body of the whale, 
you may scrape off with your hand an infinitely thin, trans- 
parent substance, somewhat resembling the thinnest shreds 
of isinglass, only it is almost as flexible and soft as satin ; 
that is, previous to being dried, when it not only contracts 
and thickens, but becomes rather hard -and brittle. I have 
several such dried bits, which I use for marks in my whale- 
books. It is transparent, as I said before ; and being laid 
upon the printed page, I have sometimes pleased myself 
with fancying it exerted a magnifying influence. At any 
rate, it is pleasant to read about whales through their own 
spectacles, as you may say. But what I am driving at here 
is this. That same infinitely thin, isinglass substance, 
which, I admit, invests the entire body of the whale, is not 
so much to be regarded as the skin of the creature, as the 
skin of the skin, so to speak ; for it were simply ridiculous 
to say, that the proper skin of the tremendous whale is 
thinner and more tender than the skin of a new-born child. 
But no more of this. 

Assuming the blubber to be the skin of the whale ; then, 
when this skin, as in the case of a very large Sperm Whale, 
will yield the bulk of one hundred barrels of oil ; and, when 
it is considered that, in quantity, or rather weight, that oil, 
in its expressed state, is only three fourths* and not the 
entire substance of the coat ; some idea may hence be had 
of the enormousness of that animated mass, a mere part of 
whose mere integument yields such a lake of liquid as that. 
Reckoning ten barrels to the ton, you have ten tons for the 
net weight of only three quarters of the stuff of the whale’s 
skin. 

In life, the visible surface of the Sperm Whale is not the 
least among the many marvels he presents. Almost in- 
variably it is all over obliquely crossed and re-crossed with 
numberless straight marks in thick array, something like 
those in the finest Italian line engravings. But these 
marks do not seem to be impressed upon the isinglass 
substance above mentioned, but seem to be seen through 
it as if they were engraved upon the body itself. Nor 
is this all. In some instances, to the quick, observant 


MOBY DICK. 


291 


eye, those linear marks, as in a veritable engraving, but 
afford the ground for far other delineations. These are 
hieroglypliical ; that is, if you call those mysterious cyphers 
on the walls of pyramids hieroglyphics, then that is the pro- 
per word to use in the present connection. By my reten- 
tive memory of the hieroglyphics upon one Sperm Whale 
in particular, I was much struck with a plate represent- 
ing the old Indian characters chiselled on the famous hier- 
oglyphic palisades on the banks of the Upper Mississippi. 
Like those mystic rocks, too, the mystic marked whale 
remains undecipherable. This allusion to the Indian rocks 
reminds me of another thing. Besides all the other phe- 
nomena which the exterior of the Sperm Whale presents, 
he not seldom displays the back, and more especially his 
flanks, effaced in great part of the regular linear appear- 
ance, by reason of numerous rude scratches, altogether of 
an irregular, random aspect. I should say that those New 
England rocks on the sea-coast, which Agassiz imagines to 
bear the marks of violent scraping contact with vast float- 
ing icebergs — I should say, that those rocks must not a little 
resemble the Sperm Whale in this particular. It also seems 
to me that such scratches in the whale are probably made 
by hostile contact with other whales ; for 1 have most re- 
marked them in the large, full grown bulls of the species. 

A word or two more concerning this matter of the skin 
or blubber of the whale. It has already been said, that 
it is stript from him in long pieces, called blanket-pieces. 
Like most sea-terms, this one is very happy and significant. 
For the whale is indeed wrapt up in his blubber as in a 
real blanket or counterpane ; or, still better, an Indian pon- 
cho slipt over his head, and skirting his extremity. It is 
by reason of this cosy blanketing of his body, that the 
whale is enabled to keep himself comfortable in all weath- 
ers, in all seas, times, and tides. What would become of 
a Greenland whale, say, in those shuddering, icy seas of the 
North, if unsupplied with his cosy surtout ? True, other 
fish are found exceedingly brisk in those Hyperborean 
waters ; but these, be it observed, are your cold-blooded, 
lungless fish, whose very bellies are refrigerators ; creatures, 
that warm themselves under the lee of an iceberg, as a 
•traveller in winter would bask before an inn fire ; whereas, 
like man, the whale has lungs and warm blood. Freeze his 
blood and he dies. How wonderful is it then— except after 
explanation — that this great monster, to whom corporeal 


292 


MOBY DICK. 


warmth is as indispensable as it is to man ; how wonderful 
that he should be found at home, immersed to his lips for 
life in those Arctic waters ! where, when seamen fall over- 
board, they are sometimes found, months afterwards, per- 
pendicularly frozen into the hearts of fields of ice, as a fly 
is found glued in amber. But more surprising is it to 
know, as has been proved by experiment, that the blood of 
a Polar whale is warmer than that of a Borneo negro in 
summer. 

It does seem to me, that herein we see the rare virtue of 
a strong individual vitality, and the rare virtue of thick 
walls, and the rare virtue of interior spaciousness. Oh, 
man ! admire and model thyself after the whale ! Do thou, 
too, remain warm among ice. Do thou, too, live in this world 
without being of it. Be cool at the equator ; keep thy blood 
fluid at the Pole. Like the great dome of St. Peter’s, and 
like the great whale, retain, O man ! in all seasons a tem- 
perature of thine own. 

But how easy and how hopeless to teach these fine things ! 
Of erections, how few are domed like St. Peter’s ! of creatures, 
how few vast as the whale ! 


CHAPTER LXIX. 

THE FUNERAL. 

“ Haul in the chains ! Let the carcase go astern ! ” 

The vast tackles have now done their duty. The peeled 
white body of the beheaded whale flashes like a marble 
sepulchre ; though changed in hue, it has not perceptibly 
lost anything in bulk. It is still colossal. Slowly it floats 
more and more away, the water round it torn and splashed 
by the insatiate sharks, and the air above vexed with rapa- 
cious flights of screaming fowls, whose beaks are like so 
many insulting poniards in the whale. The vast white 
headless phantom floats farther and farther from the ship, 
and every rod that it so floats, what seem square roods of. 
sharks arid cubic roods of fowls, augment the murderous* 
din. For hours and hours from the almost stationary ship 
that hideous sight is seen. Beneath the unclouded and 


MOBY DICK . 


293 


mild azure sky, upon the fair face of the pleasant sea, 
wafted by the joyous breezes, that great mass of death 
floats on and on, till lost in infinite perspectives. 

There’s a most doleful and most mocking funeral ! The 
sea-vultures all in pious mourning, the air-sharks all punc- 
tiliously in black or speckled. In life but few of them 
would have helped the whale, I ween, if peradventure he 
had needed it ; but upon the banquet of his funeral they 
most piously do pounce. Oh, horrible vultureism of earth! 
from which not the mightiest whale is free. 

Nor is this the end. Desecrated as the body is, a venge- 
ful ghost survives and hovers over it to scare. Espied by 
some timid man-of-war or blundering disco very- vessel from 
afar, when the distance obscuring the swarming fowls, 
nevertheless still shows the white mass floating in the 
sun, and the white spray heaving high against it ; straight- 
way the whale’s unharming corpse, with trembling fingers 
is set down in the log — shoals , rocks and breakers hereabouts : 
beware ! And for years afterwards, perhaps, ships shun 
the place ; leaping over it as silly sheep leap over a vacuum, 
because their leader originally leaped there when a stick 
was held. There’s your law of precedents ; there’s your 
utility of traditions ; there’s the story of your obstinate 
survival of old beliefs never bottomed on the earth, and 
now not even hovering in the air ! There’s orthodoxy ! 

Thus, while in life the great whale’s body may have been 
a real terror to his foes, in his death his ghost becomes a 
powerless panic to a world. 

Are you a believer in ghosts, my friend? There are 
other ghosts than the Cock- Lane one, and far deeper men 
than Doctor Johnson who believe in them. 


CHAPTER LXX. 

THE SPHINX. 

It should not have been omitted that previous to com- 
pletely stripping the body of the leviathan, he was beheaded. 
Now, the beheading of the Sperm Whale is a scientific 
anatomical feat, upon which experienced whale surgeons 
very much pride themselves : and not without reason. 


294 


MOBY DICK. 


Consider that the whale has nothing that can properly 
he called a neck ; on the contrary, where his head and body 
seem to join, there, in that very place, is the thickest part of 
him. Remember, also, that the surgeon must operate from 
above, some eight or ten feet intervening between him and 
his subject, and that subject almost hidden in a discoloured, 
rolling, and oftentimes tumultuous and bursting sea. Bear 
in mind, too, that under these untoward circumstances he 
has to cut many feet deep in the flesh ; and in that subter- 
raneous manner, without so much as getting one single peep 
into the ever-contracting gash thus made, he must skilfully 
steer clear of all adjacent, interdicted parts, and exactly 
divide the spine at a critical point hard by its insertion into 
the skull. Do you not marvel, then, at Stubb’s boast, that 
he demanded but ten minutes to behead a sperm whale ? 

When first severed, the head is dropped astern and held 
there by a cable till the body is stripped. That done, if it 
belong to a small whale it is hoisted on deck to be de- 
liberately disposed of. But, with a full grown leviathan 
this is impossible ; for the sperm whale’s head embraces 
nearly one third of his entire bulk, and completely to sus- 
pend such a burden as that, even by the immense tackles 
of a whaler, this were as vain a thing as to attempt weigh- 
ing a Dutch barn in jewellers’ scales. 

The Pequod’s whale being decapitated and the body 
stripped, the head was hoisted against the ship’s side — 
about half-way out of the sea, so that it might yet fin great 
part be buoyed up by its native element. And there with 
the strained craft steeply leaning over to it, by reason of 
the enormous downward drag from the lower mast-head, 
and every yard-arm on that side projecting like a crane 
over the waves ; there, that blood-dripping head hung to 
the Pequod’s waist like the giant Holofernes’s from the 
girdle of Judith. 

When this last task was accomplished it was noon, and the 
seamen went below to their dinner. Silence reigned over 
the before tumultuous but now deserted deck. An intense 
copper calm, like a universal yellow lotus, was more and 
more unfolding its noiseless measureless leaves upon the 
sea. 

A short space elapsed, and up into this noiselessness 
came Ahab alone from his cabin. Taking a few turns on 
the quarter-deck, he paused to gaze over the side, then 
slowly getting into the main-chains he took Stubb’s long 


MOBY DICK. 


295 


spade — still remaining there after the whale’s decapitation 
— and striking it into the lower part of the half-suspended 
mass, placed its other end crutch- wise under one arm, and 
so stood leaning over with eyes attentively fixed on this 
head. 

It was a black and hooded head ; and hanging there in 
the midst of so intense a calm, it seemed the Sphinx’s in 
the desert. “ Speak thou vast and venerable head,” mut- 
tered Ahab, “ which, though ungarnished with a beard, yet 
here and there lookest hoary with mosses ; speak, mighty 
head, and tell us the secret thing that is in thee. Of all 
divers, thou hast dived the deepest. That head upon which 
the upper sun now gleams, has moved amid this world’s 
foundations. Where unrecorded names and navies rust, 
and untold hopes and anchors rot ; where in her murderous 
hold this frigate earth is ballasted with bones of millions 
of the drowned; there, in that awful water-land, there was 
thy most familiar home. Thou hast been where bell or 
diver never went ; hast slept by many a sailor’s side, where 
sleepless mothers would give their lives to lay them down. 
Thou saw’st the locked lovers when leaping from their 
flaming ship ; heart to heart they sank beneath the exulting 
wave ; true to each other, when heaven seemed false to 
them. Thou saw’st the murdered mate when tossed by 
pirates from the midnight deck ; for hours he fell into the 
deeper midnight Of the insatiate maw; and his murderers 
still sailed on unharmed — while swift lightnings shivered 
the neighbouring ship that would have borne a righteous 
husband to outstretched, longing arms. O head ! thou hast 
seen enough to split the planets and make an infidel of 
Abraham, and not one syllable is thine ! ” 

“ Sail ho ! ” cried a triumphant voice from the main-mast- 
head. 

“ Aye ? Well, now, that’s cheering,” cried Ahab, suddenly 
erecting himself, while whole thunder-clouds swept aside 
from his brow. “ That lively cry upon this deadly calm 
might almost convert a better man. — Where away ? ” 

“ Three points on the starboard bow, sir, and bringing 
down her breeze to us ! ” 

a Better and better, man. Would now St. Paul would 
come along that way, and to my breezelessness bring his 
breeze ! O Nature, and O soul of man ! how far beyond all 
utterance are your linked analogies ! not the smallest atom 
stirs or lives on matter, but has its cunning duplicate in 
mind.” 


29G 


MOBY DICK. 


CHAPTER LXXI. 
the jeeoboam’s story. 

Hand in hand, ship and breeze blew on ; but the breeze 
came faster than the ship, and soon the Pequod began to 
rock. 

By and by, through the glass the stranger’s boats and 
manned mast-heads proved her a whale-ship. But as she 
was so far to windward, and shooting by, apparently making 
a passage to some other ground, the Pequod could not hope to 
rt ach her. So the signal was set to see what response would 
be made. 

Here he it said, that like the vessels of military marines, 
the ships of the American Whale fleet have each a private 
s'gnal ; all which signals being collected in a book with the 
names of the respective vessels attached, every captain is 
provided with it. Thereby, the whale commanders are en- 
abled to recognise each other upon the ocean, even at con- 
siderable distances and with no small facility. 

The Pequod’s signal was at last responded to by the 
stranger’s setting her own ; which proved the ship to be the 
Jeroboam of Xantucket. Squaring her yards, she bore 
down, ranged abeam under the Pequod’s lee, and lowered a 
boat ; it soon drew nigh ; but, as the side-ladder was being 
riggsd by Starbuck’s order to accommodate the visiting cap- 
tain, the stranger in question waved his hand from his boat’s 
stern in token of that proceeding being entirely unnecessary. 
It turned out that the Jeroboam had a malignant epidemic 
on board, and that Mayhew, her captain, was fearful of in- 
fecting the Pequod’s company. For, though himself and 
boat’s crew remained untainted, and though his ship was 
half a rifle-shot off, and an incorruptible sea and air rolling 
and flowing between ; yet conscientiously adhering to the 
timid quarantine of the land, he peremptorily refused to 
come into direct contact with the Pequod. 

But this did by no means prevent all communication. 
Preserving an interval of some few yards between itself and 
the ship, the Jeroboam’s boat by the occasional use of its 
oars contrived to keep parallel to the Pequod, as she heavily 


MOBY DICK. 


297 


forged through the sea (for by this time it blew very fresh), 
with her main-top-sail aback; though, indeed, at times by 
the sudden onset of a large rolling wave, the boat would be 
pushed some way ahead ; but would be soon skilfully 
brought to her proper bearings again. Subject to this, and 
other like interruptions now and then, a conversation was 
sustained between the two parties ; but at intervals not with- 
out still another interruption of a very different sort. 

Pulling an oar in the Jeroboam’s boat, was a man of a sin- 
gular appearance, even in that wild whaling life where in- 
dividual notabilities make up all totalities. He was a 
small, short, youngish man, sprinkled all over his face with 
freckles, and wearing redundant yellow hair. A long- 
skirted, cabalistically-cut coat of a faded walnut tinge en- 
veloped him ; the overlapping sleeves of which were rolled 
up on his wrists. A deep, settled, fanatic delirium was in 
his eyes. 

So soon as this figure had been first descried, Stubb had 
exclaimed — “ That’s he ! that’s he ! — the long-togged scara- 
mouch the Town-Ho’s company told us of ! ” Stubb here 
alluded to a strange story told of the Jeroboam, and a cer- 
tain man among her crew, some time previous when the 
Pequod spoke the Town-Ho. According to this account 
and what was subsequently learned, it seemed that the 
scaramouch in question had gained a wonderful ascendency 
over almost everybody in the Jeroboam. His story was 
this : 

He had been originally nurtured among the crazy society 
of Neskyeuna Shakers, where he had been a great prophet ; 
in their cracked, secret meetings, having several times de- 
scended from heaven by the way of a trap-door, announcing 
the speedy opening of the seventh vial, which he carried in 
his vest-pocket : but, which, instead of containing gunpow- 
der, was supposed to be charged with laudanum. A strange, 
apostolic whim having seized him, he had left Neskyeuna 
for Nantucket, where, with that cunning peculiar to crazi- 
ness, he assumed a steady, common-sense exterior, and 
offered himself as a green -hand candidate for the Jeroboam’s 
whaling voyage. They engaged him ; but straightway up- 
on the ship’s getting out of sight of land, his insanity broke 
out in a freshet. He announced himself as the archangel 
Gabriel, and commanded the captain to jump overboard. 
He published his manifesto, whereby he set himself forth 
as the deliverer of the isles of the sea and vicar-general of 


298 


MOBY DICK. 


all Oceanica. The unflinching earnestness with which he 
declared these things ; — the dark, daring play of his sleep- 
less, excited imagination, and all the preternatural terrors 
of real delirium, united to invest this Gabriel in the minds 
of the majority of the ignorant crew, with an atmosphere of 
sacredness. Moreover, they were afraid of him. As such a 
man, however, was not of much practical use in the ship, 
especially as he refused to work except when he pleased, the 
incredulous captain would fain have been rid of him ; but 
apprised that that individual’s intention was to land him in 
the first convenient port, the archangel forthwith opened all 
his seals and vials — devoting the ship and all hands to un- 
conditional perdition, in case this intention was carried out. 
So strongly did he work upon his disciples among the crew, 
that at last in a body they went to the captain and told him 
if Gabriel was sent from the ship, not a man of them would 
remain. He was therefore forced to relinquish his plan. 
Nor would they permit Gabriel to be any way maltreated, 
say or do what he would ; so that it came to pass that Gab- 
riel had the complete freedom of the ship. The consequence 
of all this was, that the archangel cared little or nothing for 
the captain and mates ; and since the epidemic had broken 
out, he carried a higher hand than ever ; declaring that the 
plague, as he called it, was at his sole command ; nor should 
it be stayed but according to his good pleasure. The sailors, 
mostly poor devils, cringed, and some of them fawned be- 
fore him ; in obedience to his instructions, sometimes ren- 
dering him personal homage, as to a god. Such things may 
seem incredible; but, however wondrous, they are true. 
Nor is the history of fanatics half so striking in respect to 
the measureless self-deception of the fanatic himself, as his 
measureless power of deceiving and bedevilling so many 
others. But it is time to return to the Pequod. 

“ I fear not thy epidemic, man,” said Ahab from the bul- 
warks, to Captain Mayhew, who stood in the boat’s stern ; 
“ come on board.” 

But now Gabriel started to his feet. 

“ Think, think of the fevers, yellow and bilious ! Beware 
of the horrible plague ! ” 

“ Gabriel, Gabriel ! ” cried Captain Mayhew ; “ thou must 

either ” But that instant a headlong wave shot the 

boat far ahead, and its seethings drowned all speech. 

“ Hast thou seen the White Whale ? ” demanded Ahab, 
when the boat drifted back. 


MOBY DICK. 299 

“ Think, think of thy whale-boat, stoven and sunk ! Be- 
ware of the horrible tail ! ” 

“ I tell Jdiee again, Gabriel, that — — ” But again the boat 
tore ahead as if dragged by fiends. Nothing was said for 
some moments, while a succession of riotous waves rolled 
by, which by one of those occasional caprices of the seas 
were tumbling, not heaving it. Meantime, the hoisted 
sperm whale’s head jogged about very violently, and 
Gabriel was seen eyeing it with rather more apprehensive- 
ness than his archangel nature seemed to warrant. 

When this interlude was over, Captain Mayhew began a 
dark story concerning Moby Dick ; not, however, without 
frequent interruptions from Gabriel, whenever his name 
was mentioned, and the crazy sea that seemed leagued with 
him. 

It seemed that the Jeroboam had not long left home, 
when upon speaking a whale-ship, her people were reliably 
apprised of the existence of Moby Dick, and the havoc he 
had made. Greedily sucking in this intelligence, Gabriel 
solemnly warned the captain against attacking the White 
Whale, in case the monster should be seen ; in his gibber- 
ing insanity, pronouncing the White Whale to be no less a 
being than the Shaker God incarnated ; the Shakers receiv- 
ing the Bible. But when, some year or two afterwards, 
Moby Dick was fairly sighted from the mast-heads, Macey, 
the chief mate, burned with ardour to encounter him ; and 
the captain himself being not unwilling to let him have the 
opportunity, despite all the archangel’s denunciations and 
forewarnings, Macey succeeded in persuading five men to 
man his boat. With them he pushed off; and, after much 
weary pulling, and many perilous, unsuccessful onsets, he 
at last succeeded in getting one iron fast. Meantime, 
Gabriel, ascending to the main-royal mast-head, was toss- 
ing one arm in frantic gestures, and hurling forth proph- 
ecies of speedy doom to the sacrilegious assailants of his 
divinity. Now, while Macey, the mate, was standing up 
in his boat’s bow, and with all the reckless energy of his 
tribe was venting his wild exclamations upon the whale, 
and essaying to get a fair chance for his poised lance, lo ! a 
broad white shadow rose from the sea ; by its quick, fan- 
ning motion, temporarily taking the breath out of the 
bodies of the oarsmen. Next instant, the luckless mate, so 
full of furious life, was smitten bodily into the air, and 
making a long arc in his descent, fell into the sea at the 


300 


MOBY DICK. 


distance of about fifty yards. Not a chip of the boat was 
harmed, nor a hair of any oarsmen’s head ; but the mate 
for ever sank. * 

It is well to parenthesize here, that of the fatal accidents 
in the Sperm-Whale Fishery, this kind is perhaps almost 
as frequent as any. Sometimes, nothing is injured but the 
man who is thus annihilated; oftener the boat’s bow is 
knocked off, or the thigh-board, in which the headsman 
stands, is torn from its place and accompanies the body. 
But strangest of all is the circumstance, that in more in- 
stances than one, when the body has been recovered, not a 
single mark of violence is discernible ; the man being stark 
dead. 

The whole calamity, with the falling form of Macey, was 
plainly descried from the ship. Raising a piercing shriek 
— “ The vial ! the vial ! ” Gabriel called off the terror-stricken 
crew from the further hunting of the whale. This terrible 
event clothed the archangel with added influence ; because 
his credulous disciples believed that he had specifically 
fore-announced it, instead of only making a general proph- 
ecy, which any one might have done, and so have chanced 
to hit one of many marks in the wide margin allowed. He 
became a nameless terror to the ship. 

Mayhew having concluded his narration, Ahab put such 
questions to him, that the stranger captain could not for- 
bear inquiring whether he intended to hunt the White 
Whale, if opportunity should offer. To which Ahab an- 
swered — “Aye.” Straightway, then, Gabriel once more 
started to his feet, glaring upon the old man, and vehe- 
mently exclaimed, with downward pointed finger — “ Think, 
think of the blasphemer — dead, and down there ! — beware 
of the blasphemer’s end ! ” 

Ahab stolidly turned aside ; then said to Mayhew, “ Cap- 
tain, I have just bethought me of my letter-bag ; there is a 
letter for one of thy officers, if I mistake not. Starbuck, 
look over the bag.” 

Every whale-ship takes out a goodly number of letters 
for various ships, whose delivery to the persons to whom 
they may be addressed, depends upon the mere chance of 
encountering them in the four oceans. Thus, most letters 
never reach their mark ; and many are only received after 
attaining an age of two or three years or more. 

Soon Starbuck returned with a letter in his hand. It was 
sorely tumbled, damp, and covered with a dull, spotted, 


MOBY DICK. 


301 


green mould, in consequence of being kept in a dark locker 
of the cabin. Of such a letter, Death himself might well 
have been the post-boy. 

“ Can’st not read it ? ” cried Ahab. “ Give it me, man. 
Aye, aye, it’s but a dim scrawl ;— what’s this ? ” As he 
was studying it out, Starbuck took a long cutting-spade 
pole, and with his knife slightly split the end, to insert the 
letter there, and in that way, hand it to the boat, without 
its coming any closer to the ship. 

Meantime, Ahab holding the letter, muttered, “ Mr. Har 
—yes, Mr. Harry— (a woman’s pinny hand,— the man’s wife, 
I’ll wager) — Aye — Mr .'Harry Macey, Ship Jeroboam ; — why 
it’s Macey, and he’s dead ! ” 

“ Poor fellow ! poor fellow ! and from his wife,” sighed 
Mayhew ; “ but let me have it.” 

“Nay, keep it thyself,” cried Gabriel to Ahab ; “ thou art 
soon going that way.” 

“Curses throttle thee!” yelled Ahab. “Captain May- 
hew, stand by now to receive it ; ” and taking the fatal mis- 
sive from Starbuck’s hands, he caught it in the slit of the 
pole, and reached it over towards the boat. But as he did 
so, the oarsmen expectantly desisted from rowing; the 
boat drifted a little towards the ship’s stern; so that, as if 
by magic, the letter suddenly ranged along with Gabriel’s 
eager hand. He clutched it in an instant, seized the boat- 
knife, and impaling the letter on it, sent, it thus loaded back 
into the ship. It fell at Ahab’s feet. Then Gabriel shrieked 
out to his comrades to give way with their oars, and in that 
manner the mutinous boat rapidly shot away from the 
Pequod. 

As, after this interlude, the seamen resumed their work 
upon the jacket of the whale, many strange things were 
hinted in reference to this wild affair. 


CHAPTER LXXII. 

THE MONKEY-ROPE. 

In the tumultuous business of cutting-in and attending 
to a whale, there is much running backwards and forwards 
among the crew. Now hands are wanted here, and then 
again hands are wanted there. There is no staying in any 


302 


MOBY DICK . 


one place ; for at one ancl the same time everything has to 
he done everywhere. It is much the same with him who 
endeavours the description of the scene. We must now re- 
trace our way a little. It was mentioned that upon first 
breaking ground in the whale’s back, the blubber-hook was 
inserted into the original hole there cut by the spades of 
the mates. But how did so clumsy and weighty a mass as 
that same hook get fixed in that hole ? It was inserted 
there by my particular friend Queequeg, whose duty it was, 
as harpooneer, to descend upon the monster’s back for the 
special purpose referred to. But in very many cases, cir- 
cumstances require that the harpooneer shall remain on the •] 
whale till the whole flensing or stripping operation is con- 
cluded. The whale, be it observed, lies almost entirely sub- 
merged, excepting the immediate parts operated upon. So 
down there, some ten feet below the level of the deck, the 
poor harpooneer flounders about, half on the whale and half 
in the water, as the vast mass revolves like a tread-mill be- 
neath him. On the occasion in question, Queequeg figured 
in the Highland costume — a shirt and socks — in which to 
my eyes, at least, he appeared to uncommon advantage ; and 
no one had a better chance to observe him, as will presently 
be seen. 

Being the savage’s bowsman, that is, the person who 
pulled the bow-oar in his boat (the second one from forward), 
it was my cheerful duty to attend upon him while taking 
that hard-scrabble scramble upon the dead whale’s back. 

You have seen Italian organ-boys holding a dancing-ape? by 
a long cord. Just so, from the ship’s steep side, did I hold 
Queequeg down there in the sea, by what is technically 
called in the fishery a monkey-rope, attached to a strong 
strip of canvas belted round his waist. 

It was a humourously perilous business for both of us. 

For, before we proceed further, it must be said that the 
monkey-rope was fast at both ends ; fast to Queequeg’s 
broad canvas belt, and fast to my narrow leather one. So 
that for better or for worse, we two, for the time, were wed- 
ded ; and should poor Queequeg sink to rise no more, then 
both usage and honour demanded, that instead of cutting 
the cord, it should drag me down in his wake. So, then, an 
elongated Siamese ligature united us. Queequeg was my 
own inseparable twin brother ; nor could I any way get rid 
of the dangerous liabilities which the hempen bond entailed. 

So strongly and metaphysically did I conceive of my 


MOBY DICK. 


30 a 


situation then, that while earnestly watchings his motions, 
I seemed distinctly to perceive that my own individuality 
was now merged in a joint-stock company of two; that my 
free will had received a mortal wound ; and that another’s 
mistake or misfortune might plunge innocent me into un- 
merited disaster and death. Therefore, I saw that here 
was a sort of interregnum in Providence ; for its even- 
handed equity never could have sanctioned so gross an in- 
justice. And yet still further pondering — while I jerked 
him now and then from between the whale and the ship, 
which would threaten to jam him — still further pondering, 
I say, I saw that this situation of mine was the precise 
situation of every mortal that breathes ; only, in most cases, 
he, one way or other, has this Siamese connection with a 
plurality of other mortals. If your banker breaks, you 
snap ; if your apothecary by mistake sends you poison in 
your pills, you die. True, you may say that, by exceeding 
caution, you may possibly escape these and the multitudi- 
nous other evil chances of life. But handle Queequeg’s mon- 
key-rope heedfully as I would, sometimes he jerked it so, 
that I came very near sliding overboard. Nor could I pos- 
sibly forget that, do what I would, I only had the manage- 
ment of one end of it. * 

I have hinted that I would often jerk poor Queequeg 
from between the whale and the ship — where he would oc- 
casionally fall, from the incessant rolling and swaying of 
both. But this was not the only jamming jeopardy he was 
exposed to. Unappalled by the massacre made upon them 
during the night, the sharks now freshly and more keenly 
allured by the before pent blood which began to flow from 
the carcase — the rabid creatures swarmed round it like bees 
in a beehive. 

And right in among those sharks was Queequeg ; who 
often pushed them aside with his floundering feet. A thing 
altogether incredible were it not that, attracted by such 
prey as a dead whale, the otherwise miscellaneously carniv- 
orous shark will seldom touch a man. 

Nevertheless, it may well be believed that since they have 

* The monkey-rope is found in all whales ; but it was only in the Pe- 
quod that the monkey and his holder were ever tied together. This im- 
provement upon the original usage was introduced by no less a man than 
Stubb, in order to afford the imperilled liarpooneer the strongest pos- 
sible guarantee for the faithfulnes sand vigilance of his monkey-rope 
holder. 


304 


MOBY DICK . 


such a ravenous finger in the pie, it is deemed but wise to 
look sharp to them. Accordingly, besides the monkey- 
rope, with which I now and then jerked the poor fellow from 
too close a vicinity to the maw of what seemed a peculiarly 
ferocious shark— he was provided with still another protec- 
tion. Suspended over the side in one of the stages, Tash- 
tego and Daggoo continually flourished over his head a 
couple of keen whale-spades, wherewith they slaughtered 
as many sharks as they could reach. This procedure of 
theirs, to he sure, was very disinterested and benevolent 
of them. They meant Queequeg’ s best happiness, I admit ; 
hut in their hasty zeal to befriend him, and from the cir- 
cumstance that both he and the sharks were at times half 
hidden by the blood-mudded water, those indiscreet spades 
of theirs would come nearer amputating a leg than a tail. 
But poor Queequeg, I suppose, straining and gasping there 
with that great iron hook — poor Queequeg, I suppose, only 
prayed to his Yojo, and gave up his life into the hands of 
his gods. 

Well, well, my dear comrade and twin -brother, thought 
I, as I drew in and then slacked off the rope to every swell 
of the sea — what matters it, after all ? Are you not the 
precious image of each and all of us men in this whaling 
world ? That unsounded ocean you gasp in, is Life ; those 
sharks, your foes ; those spades, your friends ; and what 
between sharks and spades you are in a sad pickle and 
peril, poor lad. 

But courage ! there is good cheer in store for you, Quee- 
queg. For now, as with blue lips and bloodshot eyes the 
exhausted savage at last climbs up the chains and stands 
all dripping and involuntarily trembling over the side ; the 
steward advances, and with a benevolent, consolatory 
glance hands him — what? Some hot Cognac? No ! hands 
him, ye gods ! hands him a cup of tepid ginger and water ! 

u Ginger ? Do I smell ginger ? ” suspiciously asked Stubb, 
coming near. “ Yes, this must be ginger,” peering into the 
as yet untasted cup. Then standing as if incredulous for 
a while, he calmly walked towards the astonished steward 
slowly saying, “Ginger? ginger? and will you have the 
goodness to tell me, Mr. Dough-Boy, where lies the virtue 
of ginger? Ginger! is ginger the sort of fuel you use, 
Dough-Boy, to kindle a fire in this shivering cannibal? 
Ginger! — what the devil is ginger ? — sea-coal? — fire- wood? 
— lucifer matches ? — tinder ? — gun-powder? — what the devil 


MOBY DICK. 305 

is ginger, I say, that you offer this cup to our poor Quee- 
queg here ? 

“ There is some sneaking Temperance Society movement 
about this business,” he suddenly added, now approaching 
Starbuck, who had just come from forward. “ Will you 
look at that kannakin, sir ; smell of it, if you please.” Then 
watching the mate’s countenance, he added : “ The steward, 
Mr. Starbuck, had the face to offer that calomel and jalap 
to Queequeg, there, this instant off the whale. Is the 
steward an apothecary, sir ? and may I ask whether this is 
the sort of bitters by which he blows back the life into a 
half-drowned man ? ” 

“ I trust not,” said Starbuck, “ it is poor stuff enough.” 

“ Aye, aye steward,” cried Stubb, “ we’ll teach you to 
drug a harpooneer ; none of your apothecary’s medicine here ; 
you want to poison us, do ye ? You have got out insurances 
on our lives and want to murder us all, and pocket the pro- 
ceeds, do ye ? ” 

“ It was not me,” cried Dough-Boy, “ it was Aunt Charity 
that brought the ginger on board ; and bade me never give 
the harpooneers any spirits, but only this ginger-jub — so she 
called it.” 

“ Ginger-jub ! you gingerly rascal ! take that ! and run 
along with ye to the lockers, and get something better. I 
hope I do no wrong, Mr. Starbuck. It is the captain’s 
orders — grog for the harpooneer on a whale.” 

“ Enough,” replied Starbuck, “ only don’t hit him again, 
but ” 

“ Oh, I never hurt when I hit, except when I hit a whale 
or something of that sort; and this fellow’s a weazel. 
What were you about saying, sir ? ” 

“ Only this : go down with him, and get what thou want- 
est thyself.” 

When Stubb reappeared, he came with a dark flask in 
one hand, and a sort of tea-caddy in the other. The first 
contained strong spirits, and was handed to Queequeg ; the 
' second was Aunt Charity’s gift, and that was freely given 
to the waves. 


20 


306 


MOBY DICK. 


CHAPTER LXXIII. 

STUBB AND FLASK KILL A EIGHT WHALE ; AND THEN HAVE A 
TALK OYER HIM. 

It must be borne in mind that all this time we have a 
Sperm Whale’s prodigious head hanging to the Pequod’s 
side. But we must let it continue hanging there a while 
till we can get a chance to attend to it. For the present 
other matters press, and the best we can do now for the 
head, is to pray heaven the tackles may hold. 

Now, during the past night and forenoon, the Pequod 
had gradually drifted into a sea, which, by its occasional 
patches of yellow brit, gave unusual tokens of the vicinity 
of Right Whales, a species of the Leviathan that but few 
supposed to be at this particular time lurking anywhere 
near. And though all hands commonly disdained the cap- 
ture of those inferior creatures ; and though the Pequod 
was not commissioned to cruise for them at all, and though 
she had passed numbers of them near the Crozetts without 
lowering a boat ; yet now that a Sperm WTiale had been 
brought alongside and beheaded, to the surprise of all, the 
announcement was made that a Right Whale should be 
captured that day, if opportunity offered. 

Nor was this long wanting. Tall spouts were seen to 
leeward ; and two boats, Stubb’s and Flask’s, were detached 
in pursuit. Pulling further and further away, they at last 
became almost invisible to the men at the mast-head. 
But suddenly in the distance, they saw a great heap of 
tumultuous whitewater, and soon after news came from aloft 
that one or both the boats must be fast. An interval passed 
and the boats were in plain sight, in the act of being dragged 
right towards the ship by the towing whale. So close did 
the monster come to the hull, that at first it seemed as if 
he meant it malice ; but suddenly going down in a maelstrom, 
within three rods of the planks, lie wholly disappeared from 
view, as if diving under the keel. “ Cut, cue ! ” was the cry 
from the ship to the boats, which, for one instant, seemed on 
the point of being brought with a deadly dash against the 
vessel’s side. But having plenty of line yet in the tubs, and 


MOBY DICK. 


307 


the whale not sounding very rapidly, they paid out abund- 
ance of rope, and at the same time pulled with all their might 
so as to get ahead of the ship. For a few minutes the 
struggle was intensely critical ; for while they still slacked 
out the tightened line in one direction, and still plied their 
oars in another, the contending strain threatened to take 
them under. But it was only a few feet advance they 
sought to gain. And they stuck to it ; till they did gain it ; 
when instantly, a swift tremour was felt running like 
lightning along the keel, as the strained line, scraping 
beneath the ship, suddenly rose to view under her bows, 
snapping and quivering ; and so flinging off its drip- 
pings, that the drops fell like bits of broken glass on 
the water, while the whale beyond also rose to sight, and 
once more the boats were. free to fly. But the fagged whale 
abated his speed, and blindly altering his course, went round 
the stern of the ship towing the two boats after him, so 
that they performed a complete circuit. 

Meantime, they hauled more and more upon their lines, 
till close flanking him on both sides, Stubb answered Flask 
with lance for lance ; and thus round and round the Pequod 
the battle went, while the multitudes of Sharks that had 
before swum round the Sperm Whale’s body, rushed to the 
fresh blood that was spilled, thirstily drinking at every new 
gash, as the eager Israelites did at the new bursting fount- 
ains that poured from the smitten rock. 

At last his spout grew thick, and with a frightful roll 
and vomit, he turned upon his back a corpse. 

While the two headsmen were engaged in making fast 
cords to his flukes, and in other ways getting the mass in 
readiness for towing, some conversation ensued between 
them. 

“ I wonder what the old man wants with this lump of 
foul lard,” said Stubb, not without some disgust at the 
thought of having to do with so ignoble a leviathan. 

“ Wants with it ?” said Flask, coiling some spare line in 
the boat’s bow, “ did you never hear that the ship which 
but once has a Sperm Whale’s head hoisted on her star- 
board side, and at the same time a Right Whale’s on the 
larboard ; did you never hear, Stubb, that that ship can 
never afterwards capsize ? ” 

“ Why not? ” 

“I don’t know, but I heard that gamboge ghost of a 
Fedallah saying so, and he seems to know all about ships’ 


308 


MOBY DICK. 


charms. But I sometimes think he’ll charm the ship to 
no good at last. I don’t half like that chap, Stubb. Did 
you ever notice how that tusk of his is a sort of carved into 
a snake’s head, Stubb ? ” 

“ Sink him ! I never look at him at all ; but if ever I get 
a chance of a dark night, and he standing hard by the bul- 
warks, and no one by ; look down there, Flask ” — pointing 
into the sea with a peculiar motion of both hands — 44 Aye, 
will I ! Flask, I take that Fedallah to be the devil in dis- 
guise. Do you believe that cock-and-bull story about his 
having been stowed away on board ship ? He’s the devil, 
T say. The reason why you don’t see his tail, v is because 
he tucks it up out of sight ; he carries it coiled away in his 
pocket, I guess. Blast him ! now that I think of it, he’s 
always wanting oakum to stuff into the toes of his boots.” 

“ He sleeps in his boots, don’t he? He hasn’t got any 
hammock ; but I’ve seen him lay of nights in a coil of rig- 
ging.” 

“No doubt, audit’s because of his cursed tail; he coils 
it down, do ye see, in the eye of the rigging.” 

“ What’s the old man have so much to do with him for ? ” 

44 Striking up a swap or a bargain, I suppose.” 

44 Bargain ? — about what ? ” 

“ Why, do ye see, the old man is hard bent after that 
White Whale, and the devil there is trying to come round 
him, and get him to swap away his silver watch, or his 
soul, or something of that sort, and then he’ll surrender 
Moby Dick.” 

“Pooh! Stubb, you are skylarking; how can Fedallah 
do that?” 

“ I don’t know, Flask, but the devil is a curious chap, and 
a wicked one, I tell ye. Why, they say as how he went a 
sauntering into the old flag-ship once, switching his tail 
about devilish easy and gentlemanlike, and inquiring if the 
old governor was at home. Well, he was at home, and 
asked the devil what he wanted. The devil, switching his 
hoofs, up and says, 4 1 want John.’ 4 What for ? ’ says the 
old governor. 4 What business is that of yours ? ’ says the 
devil, getting mad,— 4 1 want to use him.’ 4 Take him,’ says 
the governor— and by the Lord, Flask, if the devil didn’t 
give John the Asiatic cholera before he got through with 
him, I’ll eat this whale in one mouthful. But look sharp 
—ain’t you all ready there? Well, then, pull ahead, and 
let’s get the whale alongside.” 


MOB Y DICK. 


309 


“ I think I remember some such story as you were tell- 
ing,” said Flask, when at last the two boats were slowly 
advancing with their burden towards the ship, “ but I can’t 
remember where.” 

“ Three Spaniards ! Adventures of those three bloody- 
minded soldadoes ? Did ye read it there, Flask ? I guess 
ye did?” 

“ No ; never saw such a book ; heard of it, though. But 
now, tell me, Stubb, do you suppose that that devil you 
was speaking of just now, was the same you say is now on 
board the Pequod?” 

“ Am I the same man that helped kill this whale ? Doesn’t 
the devil live forever ; who ever heard that the devil was 
dead? Did you ever see any person wearing mourning for 
the devil ? And if the devil has a latch-key to get into the 
admiral’s cabin, don’t you suppose he can crawl into a port- 
hole ? Tell me that, Mr. Flask.” 

“ IIow old do you suppose Fedallali is, Stubb ? ” 

“ Do you see that mainmast there? ” pointing to the ship ; 
“ well, that’s the figure one ; now take all the hoops in the 
Pequod’s hold, and string ’em along in a row with that 
mast, for oughts, do you see ; well, that wouldn’t begin to 
be Fedallah’s age. Nor all the coopers in creation couldn’t 
show hoops enough to make oughts enough.” 

“ But see here, Stubb, I thought you a little boasted just 
now, that you meant to give Fedallah a sea-toss, if you got 
a good chance. Now, if he’s so old as all those hoops of 
yours come to, and if he is going to live forever, what good 
will it do to pitch him overboard — tell me that ? ” 

“ Give him a good ducking, anyhow.” 

“ But he’d crawl back.” 

“ Duck him again ; and keep ducking him.” 

“ Suppose he should take it into his head to duck you, 
though — yes, and drown you — what then?” 

“ I should like to see him try it ; I’d give him such a pair 
of black eyes that he wouldn’t dare to show his face in the 
admiral’s cabin again for a long while, let alone down in 
the orlop there, where he lives, and hereabouts on the upper 
decks where he sneaks so much. Damn the devil, Flask ; 
do you suppose I’m afraid of the devil ? Who’s afraid of 
him, except the old governor who daresn’t catch him and 
put him in double-darbies, as he deserves, but lets him go 
about kidnapping people ; aye, and signed a bond with him, 


310 


MOBY DICK. 


that all the people the clevil kidnapped, he’d roast for him. 
There’s the governor ! ” 

“Do you suppose Fedallah wants to kidnap Captain 
Ahab?” 

“Do I suppose it? You’ll know it before long, Flask. 
But I am going now to keep a sharp look-out on him ; and 
if I see anything very suspicious going on, I’ll just take 
him by the nape of his neck, and say — Look here, Beelzebub, 
you don’t do it ; and if he makes any fuss, by the Lord I’ll 
make a grab into his pocket for his tail, take it to the 
capstan, and give him such a wrenching and heaving, that 
his tail will come short off at the stump — do you see ; and 
then, I rather guess when he finds himself docked in that 
queer fashion, he’ll sneak off without the poor satisfaction 
of feeling his tail between his legs.” 

“ And what will you do with the tail, Stubb?” 

“ Do with it ? Sell it for an ox whip when we get home ; — 
what else?” 

“ Now, do you mean what you say, and have been saying 
all along, Stubb ? ” 

“ Mean or not mean, here we are at the ship.” 

The boats were here hailed, to tow the whale on the lar- 
board side, where fluke chains and other necessaries were 
already prepared for securing him. 

“ Didn’t I tell you so ? ” said Flask ; “ yes, you’ll soon 
see this right whale’s head hoisted up opposite that parma- 
cetti’s.” 

In good time, Flask’s saying proved true. As before, 
the Pequod steeply leaned over towards the sperm whale’s 
head, now, by the counterpoise of both heads, she regained 
her even keel ; though sorely strained, you may well 
believe. So, when on one side you hoist in Locke’s head, 
you go over that way ; but now, on the other side, hoist in 
Kant’s and you come back again ; but in very poor plight. 
Thus, some minds forever keep trimming boat. Oh, ye 
foolish ! throw all these thunderheads overboard, and then 
you will float light and right. 

In disposing of the body of a right whale, when brought 
alongside the ship, the same preliminary proceedings com- 
monly take place as in the case of a sperm whale ; only, in 
the latter instance, the head is cut off whole, but in the 
former the lips and tongue are separately removed and 
hoisted on dedk, with all the well known black bone at- 
tached to what is called the crown-piece. But nothing like 


MOB r DICK. 


311 


this, in the present case, had been clone. The carcases of 
both whales had dropped astern ; and the headladen ship 
not a little resembled a mule carrying a pair of overburden- 
ing panniers. 

Meantime, Fedallah was calmly eyeing the right whale’s 
head, and ever and anon glancing from the deep wrinkles 
there to the lines in his own hand. And Ahab chanced so 
to stand, that the Parsee occupied his shadow ; while, if 
the Parsee’s shadow was there at all it seemed only to 
blend with, and lengthen Ahab’s. As the crew toiled on, 
Laplandish speculations were bandied among them, con- 
cerning all these passing things. 


CHAPTER LXXIV. 

THE SPERM WHALE’S HEAD CONTRASTED VIEW. 

Here, now, are two great whales, laying their heads 
together ; let us join them, and lay together our own. 

Of the grand order of folio leviathans, the Sperm Whale 
and the Right Whale are by far the most noteworthy. 
They are the only whales regularly hunted by man. To 
the Nantucketer, they present the two extremes of all the 
known varieties of the whale. As the external difference 
between them is mainly observable in their heads ; and as 
a head of each is this moment hanging from the Pequod’s 
side ; and as we may freely go from one to the other, by 
merely stepping across the deck where, I should like to 
know, will you obtain a better chance to study practical 
cetology than here ? 

In the first place, you are struck by the general contrast 
between these heads. Both are massive enough in all con- 
science ; but there is a certain mathematical symmetry in 
the Sperm Whale’s which the Right Whale’s sadly lacks. 
There is more character in the Sperm Whale’s head. As you 
behold it, you involuntarily yield the immense superiority 
to him, in point of pervading dignity. In the present 
instance, too, this dignity is heightened by the pepper and 
salt colour of his head at the summit, giving token of ad- 
vanced age and large experience. In short, he.is what the 
fishermen technically call a “ grey-headed whale.” 


312 


MOBY J DICK. 


Let us now note what is least dissimilar in these heads — 
namely, the two most important organs, the eye and the ear. 
Far back on the side of the head, and low down, near the 
angle of either whale’s jaw, if you narrowly search, you will 
at least see a lashless eye, which you would fancy to be a 
young colt’s eye ; so out of all proportion is it to the mag- 
nitude of the head. 

Now, from this peculiar side way position of the whale’s 
eyes, it is plain that he can never see an object which is 
exactly ahead, no more than he can one exactly astern. 
In a word, the position of the whale’s eyes corresponds to 
that of a man’s ears ; and you may fancy, for yourself, how 
it would fare with you, did you sideways survey objects 
through your ears. You would find that you could only 
command some thirty degrees of vision in advance of the 
straight side-line of sight ; and about thirty more behind it. 
If your bitterest foe were walking straight towards you, 
with dagger uplifted in broad day, you would not be able 
to see him, any more than if he were stealing upon you 
from behind. In a word, you would have two backs, so to 
speak ; but, at the same time also, two fronts (side fronts) : 
for what is it that makes the front of a man — what, indeed, 
but his eyes ? 

Moreover, while in most other animals that I can now 
think of, the eyes are so planted as imperceptibly to blend 
their visual power, so as to produce one picture and not two 
to the brain; the peculiar position of the whale’s eyes, 
effectually divided as they are by many cubic feet of 
solid head, which towers between them like a great mountain 
separating two lakes in valleys ; this, of course, must wholly 
separate the impressions which each independent organ 
imparts. The whale, therefore, must see one distinct 
picture on this side, and another distinct picture on that 
side ; while all between must be profound darkness and 
nothingness to him. Man may, in effect, be said to look 
out on the world from a sentry-box with tAvo joined sashes 
for his windoAV. But Avith the whale, these two sashes are 
separately inserted, making tAvo distinct AvindoAvs, but sadly 
impairing the vieAV. This peculiarity of the whale’s eyes is 
a thing always to be borne in mind in the fishery ; and 
to be remembered by the reader in some subsequent 
scenes. 

A curious and most puzzling question might be started 
concerning this visual matter as touching "the Leviathan. 


MOBY DICK. 


313 


But I must be content with a hint. So long as a man’s 
eyes are open in the light, the act of seeing is involuntary ; 
that is, he cannot then help mechanically seeing whatever 
objects are before him. Nevertheless, any one’s experience 
will teach him, that though he can take in an indiscrimin- 
ating sweep of things at one glance, it is quite impossible 
for him, attentively, and completely, to examine any two 
things — however large or however small — at one and the 
same instant of time ; never mind if they lie side by side 
and touch each other. But if you now come to separate 
these two objects, and surround each by a circle of profound 
darkness ; then, in order to see one of them, in such a manner 
as to bring your mind to bear on it, the other will be utterly 
excluded from your contemporary consciousness. How is 
it, then, with the whale ? True, both his eyes, in themselves, 
must simultaneously act ; but is his brain so much more 
comprehensive, combining, and subtle than man’s, that he 
can at the same moment of time attentively examine two 
distinct prospects, one on one side of him, and the other in 
an exactly opposite direction ? If he can, then it is as 
marvellous a thing in him, as if a man were able simultane- 
ously to go through the demonstrations of two distinct 
problems in Euclid. Nor, strictly investigated, is there any 
incongruity in this comparison. 

It may be but an idle whim, but it has always seemed to 
me, that the extraordinary vacillations of movement dis- 
played by some whales when beset by three or four boats ; 
the timidity and liability to queer frights, so common to such 
whales ; I think that all this indirectly proceeds from the 
helpless perplexity of volition, in which their divided and 
diametrically opposite powers of vision must involve 
them. 

But the ear of the whale is full as curious as the eye. If 
you are an entire stranger to their race, you might hunt 
over these two heads for hours, and never discover that 
organ. The ear has no external leaf whatever ; and into 
the hole itself you can hardly insert a quill, so wondrously 
minute is it. It is lodged a little behind the eye. With 
respect to their ears, this important difference is to be ob- 
served between the sperm whale and the right. While the 
ear of the former has an external opening, that of the latter 
is entirely and evenly covered over with a membrane, so 
as to be quite imperceptible from without. 

Is it not curious, that so vast a being as the whale should 


314 


MOBY DICK. 


see tlie world through so small an eye, and hear the thunder 
through an ear which is smaller than a hare’s ? But if his 
eyes were broad as the lens of Herschel’s great telescope ; and 
his ears capacious as the porches of cathedrals ; would that 
make him any longer of sight, or sharper of hearing? Not 
at all.— Why then do you try to “enlarge” your mind? 
Subtilise it. 

Let us now with whatever levers and steam-engines we 
have at hand, cant over the sperm whale’s head, that it 
may lie bottom up ; then, ascending by a ladder to the sum- 
mit, have a peep down the mouth ; and were it not that the 
body is now completely separated from it, with a lantern 
we might descend into the great Kentucky Mammoth Cave 
of his stomach. But let us hold on here by this tooth, and 
look about us where we are. What a really beautiful and 
chaste-looking mouth ! from floor to ceiling, lined, or rather 
papered with a glistening white membrane, glossy as bridal 
satins. 

But come out now, and look at this portentous lower 
jaw, which seems like the long narrow lid of an immense 
snuff-box, with the hinge at one end, instead of one side. 
If you pry it up, so as to get it overhead, and expose its rows of 
teeth, it seems a terrific portcullis ; and such alas ! it proves 
to many a poor wight in the fishery, upon whom these 
spikes fall with impaling force. But far more terrible is it 
to behold, when fathoms down in the sea, you see some 
sulky whale, floating there suspended, with his prodigious 
jaw, some fifteen feet long, hanging straight down at right- 
angles with his body, for all the world like a ship’s jib-boom. 
This whale is not dead ; he is only dispirited ; out of sorts, 
perhaps ; hypochondriac ; and so supine, that the hinges of 
his jaw have relaxed, leaving him there in that ungainly 
sort of plight, a reproach to all his tribe, who must, no doubt 
imprecate lock-jaws upon him. 

In most cases this lower jaw — being easily unhinged by a 
practised artist — is disengaged and hoisted on deck for the 
purpose of extracting the ivory teeth, and furnishing a sup- 
ply of that hard white whalebone with which the fishermen 
fashion all sorts of curious articles, including canes, um- 
brella-stocks, and handles to riding- whips. 

With a long, weary hoist the jaw is dragged on board, 
as if it were an anchor; and when the proper time comes — . 
some few days after the other work — Queequeg, Daggoo, 
and Tashtego, being all accomplished dentists, are set to 


MOB Y DICK. 


315 


drawing teeth. With a keen cutting-spade, Queequeg 
lances the gums ; then the jaw is lashed down to ringbolts, 
and a tackle being rigged from aloft, they drag out these 
teeth, as Michigan oxen drag stumps of old oaks out of 
wild wood lands. There are generally forty-two teeth in 
all ; in old whales, much worn down, but undecayed ; nor 
filled after our artificial fashion. The jaw is afterwards 
sawn into slabs, and piled away like joists for building 
houses. 


CHAPTER LXXV. 

THE EIGHT WHALE’S HEAD. CONTRASTED VIEW. 

Crossing the deck, let us now have a good long look at 
the 'Right Whale’s head. 

As in general shape the noble Sperm Whale’s head may 
be compared to a Roman war-chariot (especially in front, 
where it is so broadly rounded) ; so, at a broad view, the 
Right Whale’s head bears a rather inelegant resemblance 
to a gigantic galliot-toed shoe. Two hundred years ago 
an old Dutch voyager likened its shape to that of a shoe- 
maker’s last. And in this same last or shoe, that old 
woman of the nursery tale, with the swarming brood, might 
very comfortably be lodged, she and all her progeny. 

But as you come nearer to this great head it begins to 
assume different aspects, according to your point of view. 
If you stand on its summit and look at these two /-shaped 
spoutholes, you would take the whole head for an enorm- 
ous bass-viol, and these spiracles, the apertures in its sound- 
ing-board. Then, again, if you fix your eye upon this 
strange, crested, comb-like incrustation on the top of the 
mass — this green, barnacled thing, which the Greenlanders 
call the “ crown,” and the Southern fishers the “ bonnet ” 
of the Right Whale ; fixing your eyes solely on this, you 
would take the head for the trunk of some huge oak, with 
a bird’s nest in its crotch. At any rate, when you watch 
those live crabs that nestle here on this bonnet, such an 
idea will be almost sure to occur to you ; unless, indeed, 
your fancy has been fixed by the technical term “crown” 
also bestowed upon it ; in which case you will take great 


316 


MOBY BICK. . 


interest in thinking how this mighty monster is actually a 
diademed king of the sea, whose green crown has been put 
together for him in this marvellous manner. But if this 
whale he a king, he is a very sulky looking fellow to grace 
a diadem. Look at that hanging lower lip ! what a huge 
sulk and pout is there ! a sulk and pout, by carpenter’s 
measurement, about twenty feet long and five feet deep ; a 
sulk and pout that will yield you some 500 gallons of oil 
and more. 

A great pity, now, that this unfortunate whale should be 
hare-lipped. The fissure is about afoot across. Probably 
the mother during an important interval was sailing down 
the Peruvian coast, when earthquakes caused the beach to 
gape. Over this lip, as over a slippery threshold, we now 
slide into the mouth. Upon my word were I at Mackinaw, 
I should take this to he the inside of an Indian wigwam. 
Good Lord ! is this the road that Jonah went ? The roof 
is about twelve feet high, and runs to a pretty sharp angle, 
as if there were a regular ridge-pole there ; while these 
ribbed, arched, hairy sides, present us with those wondrous, 
half vertical, scimetar-sliaped slats of whalebone, say three 
hundred on a side, which depending from the upper part of 
the head or crown hone, form those Venetian blinds which 
have elsewhere been cursorily mentioned. The edges of 
these bones are fringed with hairy fibres, through which 
the Right Whale strains the water, and in whose intri- 
cacies he retains the small fish, when open-mouthed he goes 
through the seas of brit in feeding time. In the central 
blinds of bone, as they stand in their natural order, there 
are certain curious marks, curves, hollows, and ridges, where- 
by some whalemen calculate the creature’s age, as the age 
of an oak by its circular rings. Though the certainty of 
this criterion is far from demonstrable, yet it has the savour 
of analogical probability. At any rate, if we yield to it, 
we must grant a far greater age to the Right Whale than at 
first glance will seem reasonable. 

In old times, there seems to have prevailed the most 
curious fancies concerning these blinds. One voyager in 
Purchas calls them the wondrous “ whiskers ” inside of 
the whale’s mouth ; * another, “ hogs’ hristl'es ; ” a third 

* This reminds us that the Right Whale really has a sort of whisker, 
or rather a moustache, consisting of a few scattered white hairs on 
the upper part of the outer end of the lower jaw. Sometimes these 
tufts impart a rather brigandish expression to his otherwise solemn 
countenance. 


MOBY DICK. 


317 


old gentleman in Hackluyt uses the following elegant lan- 
guage : “ There are about two hundred and fifty fins grow- 
ingon each side of his upper chop , which arch over his tongue 
on each side of his mouth.” 

As every one knows, these same “ hogs’ bristles,” “ fins,” 
“ whiskers,” “ blinds,” or whatever you please, furnish to 
the ladies their busks and other stiffening contrivances. 
But in this particular, the demand has long been on the 
decline. It was in Queen Anne’s time that the bone was 
in its glory, the farthingale being then all the fashion. And 
as those ancient dames moved about gaily, though in the 
jaws of the whale, as you may say ; even so, in a shower, 
with the like thoughtlessness, do we nowadays fly under 
the same jaws for protection; the umbrella being a tent 
spread over the same bone. 

But now forget all about blinds and whiskers for a 
moment, and, standing in the Right Whale’s mouth, look 
around you afresh. Seeing all these colonnades of bone so 
methodically ranged about, would you not think you were 
inside of the great Haarlem organ, and gazing upon its 
thousand pipes ? For a carpet to the organ we have a rug 
of the softest Turkey — the tongue, which is glued, as it were, 
to the floor of the mouth. It is very fat and tender, and apt 
to tear in pieces in hoisting it on deck. This particular 
tongue now before us ; at a passing glance I should say it 
was a six-barreler ; that is, it will yield you about that 
amount of oil. 

Ere this, you must have plainly seen the truth of what I 
started with — that the Sperm Whale and the Right Whale 
have almost entirely different heads. To sum up, then : in 
the Right Whale’s there is no great well of sperm ; no ivory 
teeth at all; no long, slender mandible of a lower jaw, like 
the Sperm Whale’s. Nor in the Sperm Whale are there 
any of those blinds of bone ; no huge lower lip ; and scarcely 
anything of a tongue. Again the Right Whale has two 
external spout-holes, the Sperm Whale only one. 

Look your last, now, on these venerable hooded heads, 
while they yet lie together ; for one will soon sink, un- 
recorded, in the sea ; the other will not be very long in 
following. 

Can you catch the expression of the Sperm Whale’s 
there ? It is the same he died with, only some of the longer 
wrinkles in the forehead seem now faded away. I think 
his broad brow to be full of a prairie-like placidity, bom of 


318 


MOBY DICK. 


a speculative indifference as to death. But mark the other 
head’s expression. See that amazing lower lip, pressed by 
accident against the vessel’s side, so as firmly to embrace 
the jaw. Does not this whole head seem to speak of an 
enormous practical resolution in facing death ? This Right 
Whale I take to have been a Stoic ; the Sperm Whale, a 
Platonian, who might have taken up Spinoza in his latter 
years. 


CHAPTER LXXVI. 

THE BATTEEIN G-R A M. 

Ere quitting, for the nonce, the Sperm Whale’s head, I 
would have you, as a sensible physiologist, simply — par- 
ticularly remark its front aspect, in all its compacted col- 
lectedness. I would have you investigate it now with the 
sole view of forming to yourself some unexaggerated, intel- 
ligent estimate of whatever battering-ram power may be 
lodged there. Here is a vital point ; for you must either 
satisfactorily settle this matter with yourself, or forever 
remain an infidel as to one of the most appalling, but not 
the less true events, perhaps anywhere to be found in all 
recorded history. 

You observe that in the ordinary swimming position of 
the Sperm Whale, the front of his head presents an almost 
wholly vertical plane to the water ; you observe that the 
lower part of that front slopes considerably backwards, so as 
to furnish more of a retreat for the long socket which re- 
ceives the boom-like lower jaw ; you observe that the mouth 
is entirely under the head, much in the same way, indeed, 
as though your own mouth were entirely under your chin. 
Moreover you observe that the whale has no external nose ; 
and that what nose he has — his spout hole — is on the top 
of his head ; you observe that his eyes and ears are at the 
sides of his head, nearly one third of his entire length from 
the front. Wherefore, you must now have perceived that 
the front of the Sperm Whale’s head is a dead, blind wall 
without a single organ or tender prominence of any sort 
whatsoever. Furthermore, you are now to consider that 
only in the extreme, lower, backward sloping part of the 


MOBY DICK. 


319 


front of the head, is there the slightest vestige of hone ; 
and not till you get near twenty feet from the forehead do 
you come to the full cranial development. So that this 
whole enormous boneless mass is as one wad. Finally, 
though, as will soon be revealed, its contents partly com- 
prise the most delicate oil ; yet, you are now to be apprised 
of the nature of the substance which so impregnably in- 
vests all that apparent effeminacy. In some previous place 
I have described to yon how the blubber wraps the body of 
the whale, as the rind wraps an orange. Just so with the 
head ; but with this difference : about the head this enve- 
lope, though not so thick, is of a boneless toughness, ines- 
timable by any man who has not handled it. The severest 
pointed harpoon, the sharpest lance darted by the strong- 
est human arm, impotently rebounds from it. It is. as 
though the forehead of the Sperm Whale were paved 
with horses’ hoofs. I do not think that any sensation lurks 
in it. 

Bethink yourself also of another thing. When two large, 
loaded Indiamen chance to crowd and crush towards each 
other in the docks, what do the sailors do ? They do not 
suspend between them, at the point of coming contact, any 
merely hard substance, like iron or wood. No, they hold 
there a large, round wad of tow and cork, enveloped in the 
thickest and toughest of ox-liide. That bravely and unin- 
jured takes the jam which would have snapped all their 
oaken handspikes and iron crow-bars. By itself this suffi- 
ciently illustrates the obvious fact I drive at. But supple- 
mentary to this, it has hypothetically occurred to me, that 
as ordinary fish possess what is called a swimming bladder 
in them, capable, at will, of distension or contraction ; and 
as the Sperm Whale, as far as I know, has no such provi- 
sion in him ; considering, too, the otherwise inexplicable 
manner in which he now depresses his head altogether be- 
neath the surface, and anon swims with it high elevated 
out of the water ; considering the unobstructed elasticity 
of its envelope ; considering the unique interior of his head ; 
it has hypothetically occurred to me, I say, that those mys- 
tical lung-celled honeycombs there may possibly have some 
hitherto unknown and unsuspected connection with the 
outer air, so as to be susceptible to atmospheric distention 
and contraction. If this be so, fancy the irresistibleness of 
that might, to which the most impalpable and destructive 
of all elements contributes. 


320 


MOBY DICK. 


Now, mark. Unerringly impelling this dead, impregna- 
ble, uninjurable wall, and this most buoyant thing within; 
there swims behind it all a mass of tremendous life, only to 
be adequately estimated as piled wood is — by the cord ; and 
all obedient to one volition, as the smallest insect. So that 
when I shall hereafter detail to you all the specialties and 
concentrations of potency everywhere lurking in this ex- 
pansive monster ; when I shall show you some of his more 
inconsiderable braining feats; I trust you will have re- 
nounced all ignorant incredulity, and be ready to abide by 
this ; that though the Sperm Whale stove a passage through 
the Isthmus of Darien, and mixed the Atlantic with the 
Pacific, you would not elevate one hair of your eyebrow. 
For unless you own the whale, you are but a provincial and 
sentimentalist in Truth. But clear Truth is a thing for 
salamander giants only to encounter; how small the chances 
for the provincials then ? What befell the weakling youth 
lifting the dread goddess’s veil at Lais ? 


CHAPTER LXXVII. 

THE GREAT HEIDELBURGH TUN. 

Now comes the Baling of the Case. But to comprehend 
it aright, you must know something of the curious internal 
structure of the thing operated upon. 

Regarding the Sperm Whale’s head as a solid oblong, you 
may on an inclined plane, sideways divide it into two 
quoins,* whereof the lower is the bony structure, forming 
the cranium and jaws, and the upper an unctuous mass 
wholly free from bones : its broad forward end forming the 
expanded vertical apparent forehead of the whale. At the 
middle of the forehead horizontally subdivide this upper 
quoin, and then you have two almost equal parts, which 
before were naturally divided by an internal wall of a thick 
tendinous substance. 

* Quoin is not a Euclidean term. It belongs to the pure nautical 
mathematics. I know not that it has been defined before. A quoin is a 
solid which differs from a wedge in having its sharp end formed by the 
steep inclination of one side, instead of the mutual tapering of both sides, 


MOB Y DICK. 


321 


The lower subdivided part, called the junk, is one 
immense honeycomb of oil, formed by the crossing and re- 
crossing, into ten thousand, infiltrated cells, of tough elastic 
white fibres throughout its whole extent. The upper part, 
known as the Case, may be regarded as the great Heidel- 
burgh Tun of the Sperm Whale. And as that famous 
great tierce is mystically carved in front, so the whale’s 
vast plaited forehead forms innumerable strange devices 
for the emblematical adornment of his wondrous tun. 
Moreover, as that of Heidelburgh was always replenished 
with the most excellent of the wines of the Rhenish valleys, 
so the tun of the whale contains by far the most precious of 
all his oily vintages ; namely, the highly-prized spermaceti, 
in its absolutely pure, limpid, and odoriferous state. Nor 
is this precious substance found unalloyed in any other part 
of the creature. Though in life it remains perfectly fluid, 
yet, upon exposure to the air, after death, it soon begins to 
concrete ; sending forth beautiful crystalline shoots, as when 
the first thin delicate ice is just forming in water. A large 
whale’s case generally yields about five hundred gallons of 
s-perm, though from unavoidable circumstances, consider- 
ate of it is spilled, leaks, and dribbles away, or is otherwise 
irrevocably lost in the ticklish business of securing what 
you can. 

I know not with what fine and costly material the Heidel- 
burgh Tun was coated within, but in superlative richness 
that coating could not possibly have compared with the 
silken pearl coloured membrane, like the lining of a fine 
pelisse, forming the inner surface of the Sperm Whale’s 
case. 

It will have been seen that the Heidelburgh Tun of the 
Sperm Whale embraces the entire length of the entire top 
of the head ; and since — as has been elsewhere set forth — - 
the head embraces one third of the whole length of the 
creature, then setting that length down at eighty feet for a 
good sized whale, you have more than twenty-six feet for 
the depth of the tun, when it is lengthwise hoisted up and 
down against a ship’s side. 

As in decapitating the whale, the operator’s instrument 
is brought close to the spot where an entrance is subse- 
quently forced into the spermaceti magazine ; he has there 
fore to be uncommonly heedful, lest a careless, untimely 
stroke should invade the sanctuary and wastingly let out its 
invaluable contents. It is this decapitated end of the head, 

21 


322 


MOBY DICK. 


also, which is at last elevated out of the water, and retained 
in that position by the enormous cutting tackles, whose 
hempen combinations, on one side, make quite a wilderness 
of ropes in that quarter. 

Thus much being said, attend now, I pray -you, to that 
marvellous and — in this particular instance — almost fatal 
operation whereby the Sperm Whale’s great Heidelburgli 
Tun is tapped. 


CHAPTER LXXVIII. 

CISTERN AND BUCKETS. 

Nimble as a cat, Tashtego mounts aloft ; and without 
altering his erect posture, runs straight out upon the over- 
hanging mainyard-arm, to the part where it exactly pro- 
jects over the hoisted Tun. He has carried with him a 
light tackle called a whip, consisting of only two parts, 
travelling through a single-sheaved block. Securing this 
block, so that it hangs down from the yard-arm, he swings 
one end of the rope, till it is caught and firmly held by a 
hand on deck. Then, hand-over-hand, down the other part, 
the Indian drops through the air, till dexterously he lands 
on the summit of the head. There — still high elevated 
above the rest of the company, to whom he vivaciously 
cries — he seems some Turkish Muzzin calling the good 
people to prayers from the top of a tower. A short-handled 
sharp spade being sent up to him, he diligently searches 
for the proper place to begin breaking into the Tun. In 
this business he proceeds very heedfully, like a treasure- 
hunter in some old house, sounding the walls to find where 
the gold is masoned in. By the time this cautious search 
is over, a stout iron-bound bucket, precisely like a well- 
bucket, has been attached to one end of the whip : while the 
other end, being stretched across the deck, is there held by 
two or three alert hands. These last now hoist the bucket 
within grasp of the Indian, to whom another person has 
reached up a very long pole. Inserting this pole into the 
bucket, Tashtego downward guides the bucket into the Tun, 
till it entirely disappears ; then giving the word to the sea- 
men at the whip, up comes the bucket again, all bubbling 


MOBY DICK. 


323 

like a dairy-maid’s pail of new milk. Carefully lowered 
from its height, the full-freighted vessel is caught by an 
appointed hand, and quickly emptied into a large tub. 
Then re-mounting aloft, it again goes through the same 
round until the deep cistern will yield no more. Towards 
the end, Tashtego has to ram his long pole harder and harder, 
and deeper and deeper into the Tun, until some twenty feet 
of the pole have gone down. 

Now, tjie people of the Pequod had been baling some 
time in this way ; several tubs had been filled with the fra- 
grant sperm ; when all at once a queer accident happened. 
Whether it was that Tashtego, that wild Indian, was so 
heedless and reckless as to let go for a moment his one- 
handed hold on the great cabled tackles suspending the 
head ; or whether the place where he stood was so treacher- 
ous and oozy ; or whether the Evil One himself would have 
it to fall out so, without stating his particular reason ; how 
it was exactly, there is no telling now ; but, on a sudden, 
as the eightieth or ninetieth bucket came suckingly up — my 
God ! poor Tashtego — like the twin reciprocating bucket in 
a veritable well, dropped head-foremost down into this great 
Tun of Ileidelburgh, and with a horrible oily gurgling went 
clean out of sight ! 

“ Man overboard ! ” cried Daggoo, who amid the general 
consternation first came to his senses. “ Swing the bucket 
this way ! ” and putting one foot into it, so as the better to 
secure his slippery hand-hold on the whip itself, the hoisters 
ran him high up to the top of the head, almost before Tash- 
tego could have reached its interior bottom. Meantime, 
there was a terrible tumult. Looking over the side, they 
saw the before lifeless head throbbing and heaving just 
below the surface of the sea, as if that moment seized with 
some momentous idea ; whereas it was only the poor Indian 
unconsciously revealing by those struggles the perilous 
depth to which he had sunk. 

At this instant, while Daggoo, on the summit of the head, 
was clearing the whip — which had somehow got foul of the 
great cutting tackles — a sharp cracking noise was heard ; 
and to the unspeakable horror of all, one of the two enor- 
mous hooks suspending the head tore out, and with a vast 
vibration the enormous mass sideways swung, till the drunk 
ship reeled and shook as if smitten by an iceberg. The one 
remaining hook, upon which the entire strain now depended, 
seemed every instant to be on the point of giving way • 


324 


MOBY DICK. 


an event still more likely from the violent motions of the 
head. 

“ Come down, come down ! ” yelled the seamen to Dag- 
goo, but with one hand holding on to the heavy tackles, so 
that if the head should drop, he would still remain sus- 
pended; the negro having cleared the foul line, rammed 
down the bucket into the now collapsed well, meaning that 
the buried harpooneer should grasp it, and so be hoisted 
out. 

“ In heaven’s name, man,” cried Stubb, “ are you ramming 
home a cartridge there ? — Avast ! How will that help him ; 
jamming that iron-bound bucket on top of his head ? Avast, 
will ye ! ” 

“ Stand clear of the tackle ! ” cried a voice like the burst- 
ing of a rocket. 

Almost in the same instant, with a thunder-boom, the 
enormous mass dropped into the sea, like Niagara’s Table- 
Rock into the whirlpool ; the suddenly relieved hull rolled 
away from it, to far down her glittering copper ; and all 
caught their breath, as half swinging — now over the sailors’ 
heads, and now over the water — Daggoo, through a thick 
mist of spray, was dimly beheld clinging to the pendulous 
tackles, while poor, buried-alive Tashtego was sinking 
utterly down to the bottom of the sea ! But hardly had 
the blinding vapour cleared away, when a naked figure with 
a boarding-sword in its hand, was for one swift moment 
seen hovering over the bulwarks. The next, a loud splash 
announced that my brave Queequeg had dived to the rescue. 
One packed rush was made to the side, and every eye counted 
every ripple, as moment followed moment, and no sign of 
either the sinker or the diver could be seen. Some hands 
now jumped into a boat alongside, and pushed a little off 
from the ship. 

“ Ha ! ha ! ” cried Daggoo, all at once, from his now quiet, 
swinging perch overhead ; and looking further off from the 
side, we saw an arm thrust upright from the blue waves ; a 
sight strange to see, as an arm thrust forth from the grass 
over a grave. 

“ Both ! both ! — it is both ! ” — cried Daggoo again with a 
joyful shout; and soon after, Queequeg was seen boldly 
striking out with one hand, and with the other clutching 
the long hair of the Indian. Drawn into the waiting boat, 
they were quickly brought to the deck ; but Tashtego was 
long in coming to, and Queequeg did not look very brisk. 


MOBY DICK . 


325 


Now, how had this noble rescue been accomplished? 
Why, diving after the slowly descending head, Queequeg 
with his keen sword had made side lunges near its bottom, 
so as to scuttle a large hole there ; then, dropping his sword, 
had thrust his long arm far inwards and upwards, and so 
hauled out our poor Tash by the head. He averred, that 
upon first thrusting in for him, a leg was presented ; but 
well knowing that that was not as it ought to be, and might 
occasion great trouble ; — he had thrust back the leg, and 
by a dexterous heave and toss, had wrought a somerset upon 
the Indian ; so that with the next trial, he came forth in 
the good old way — head foremost. As for the great head 
itself, that was doing as well as could be expected. 

And thus, through the courage and great skill in obstetrics 
of Queequeg, the deliverance, or rather, delivery of Tashtego, 
was successfully accomplished, in the teeth, too, of the 
most untoward and apparently hopeless impediments ; which 
is a lesson by no means to be forgotten. Midwifery should 
be taught in the same course with fencing and boxing, rid- 
ing and 'rowing. 

I know that this queer adventure of the Gay-Header’s 
will be sure to seem incredible to some landsmen, though 
they themselves may have either seen or heard of some one’s 
falling into a cistern ashore ; an accident which not seldom 
happens, and with much less reason too than the Indian’s, 
considering the exceeding slipperiness of the curb of the 
Sperm Whale’s well. 

But, peradventure, it may be sagaciously urged, how is 
this ? We thought the tissued, infiltrated head of the Sperm 
Whale, was the lightest and most corky part about him ; 
and yet thou makest it sink in an element of a far greater 
specific gravity than itself. We have thee there. Not at 
all, but I have ye ; for at the time poor Tash fell in, the 
case had been nearly emptied of its lighter contents, leaving 
little but the dense tendinous wall of the well — a double 
welded, hammered substance, as 1 have before said, much 
heavier than the sea water, and a lump of which sinks in it 
like lead almost. But the tendency to rapid sinking in this 
substance was in the present instance materially counteracted 
by the other parts of the head remaining undetached from 
it, so that it sank very slowly and deliberately indeed, 
affording Queequeg a fair chance for performing his agile 
obstetrics on the run, as you may say. Yes, it was a run- 
ning delivery, so it was. 


MOBY DICK. 


326 

Now, had Tashtego perished in that head, it had been a 
very precious perishing; smothered in the very whitest and 
daintiest of fragrant spermaceti ; coffined, hearsed, and 
tombed in the secret inner chamber and sanctum sanctorum 
of the whale. Only one sweeter end can readily be recalled 
— the delicious death of an Ohio honey-hunter, who seeking 
honey in the crotch of a hollow tree, found such exceeding 
store of it, that leaning too far over, it sucked him in, so that 
he died embalmed. How many, think ye, have likewise 
fallen into Plato’s honey head, and sweetly perished there? 


CHAPTER LXXIX. 

THE PRAIRIE. 

To scan the lines of his face, or feel the bumps on the head 
of this Leviathan ; this is a thing which no Physiognomist 
or Phrenologist has as yet undertaken. Such an enterprise 
would seem almost as hopeful as for Lavater to have scru- 
tinised the wrinkles on the Rock of Gibraltar, or for Gall 
to have mounted a ladder and manipulated the Dome of the 
Pantheon. Still, in that famous work of his, Lavater not 
only treats of the various faces of men, but also attentively 
studies the faces of horses, birds, serpents, and fish ; and 
dwells in detail upon the modifications of expression dis- 
cernible therein. Nor have Gall and his disciple Spurzheim 
failed to throw out some hints touching the phrenological 
characteristics of other beings than man. Therefore, though 
I am but ill qualified for a pioneer, in the application of 
these two semi-sciences to the whale, I will do my endeavour. 
I try all things ; I achieve what I can. 

Physiognomically regarded, the Sperm Whale is an 
anomalous creature. He has no proper nose. And since the 
nose is the central and most conspicuous of the features ; 
and since it perhaps most modifies and finally controls 
their combined expression ; hence it would seem that its 
entire absence, as an external appendage, must very largely 
affect the countenance of the whale. For as in landscape 
gardening, a spire, cupola, monument, or tower of some sort, 
is deemed almost indispensable to the completion of the 
scene ; so no face can be physiognomically in keeping with- 
out the elevated open-work belfry of the nose. Dash the 


MOBY DICK. 


327 


nose from Phidias’s marble Jove, and what a sorry remain- 
der ! Nevertheless, Leviathan is of so mighty a magnitude, 
all his proportions are so stately, that the same deficiency 
which in the sculptured Jove was hideous, in him is no 
blemish at all. Nay, it is an added grandeur. A nose to 
the whale would have been impertinent. As on your phy- 
siognomical voyage you sail round his vast head in your 
jolly-boat, your noble conceptions of him are never insulted 
by the reflection that he has a nose to be pulled. A pestilent 
conceit, which so often will insist upon obtruding even when 
beholding the mightiest royal beadle on his throne. 

In some particulars, perhaps the most imposing physiog- 
nomical vieAV to be had of the Sperm Whale, is that of the 
full front of his head. This aspect is sublime. 

In thought, a fine human brow is like the East when 
troubled with the morning. In the repose of the pasture, 
the curled brow of the bull has a touch of the grand in it. 
Pushing heavy cannon up mountain defiles, the elephant’s 
brow is majestic. Human or animal, the mystical brow 
is as that great golden seal affixed by the German emperors 
to their decrees. It signifies — “ God : done this day by my 
hand.” But in most creatures, nay in man himself, very 
often the brow is but a mere strip of alpine land lying along 
the snow line. Few are the foreheads which like Shak- 
speare’s or Melancthon’s rise so high, and descend so low, 
that the eyes themselves seem clear, eternal, tideless moun- 
tain lakes ; and all above them in the forehead’s wrinkles, 
you seem to track the antlered thoughts descending there 
to drink, as the Highland hunters track the snow prints of 
the deer. But in the great Sperm Whale, this high and 
mighty god-like dignity inherent in the brow is so immensely 
amplified, that gazing on it, in that full front view, you feel 
the Deity and the dread powers more forcibly than in be- 
holding any other object in living nature. For you see no 
one point precisely ; not one distinct feature is revealed ; 
no nose, eyes, ears, or mouth ; no face ; he has none, proper ; 
nothing but that one broad firmament of a forehead, pleated 
with riddles ; dumbly lowering with the doom of boats, and 
ships, and men. Nor, in profile, does this wondrous brow 
diminish ; though that way viewed, its grandeur does not 
domineer upon you so. In profile, you plainly perceive that 
horizontal, semicrescentic depression in the forehead’s 
middle, which, in man, is Lavater’s mark of genius. 

But how ? Genius in the Sperm Whale ? Has the Sperm 


328 


MOBY DICK. 


Whale ever written a book, spoken a speech ? No, his 
great genius is declared in his doing nothing particular to 
prove it. It is moreover declared in his pyramidical silence. 
And this reminds me that had the great Sperm Whale been 
known to the young Orient World, he would have been 
deified by their child-magian thoughts. They deified the 
crocodile of the Nile, because the crocodile is tongueless ; 
and the Sperm Whale has no tongue, or at least it is so 
exceedingly small, as to he incapable of protrusion. If 
hereafter any highly cultured, poetical nation shall lure 
back to their birth-right, the merry May-day gods of old ; 
and livingly enthrone them again in the now egotistical sky ; 
in the now unhaunted hill ; then be sure, exalted to Jove’s 
high seat, the great Sperm Whale shall lord it. 

Champollion deciphered the wrinkled granite hierogly- 
phics. But there is no Champollion to decipher the Egypt 
of every man’s and every being’s face. Physiognomy, like 
every other human science, is but a passing fable. If then, 
Sir William Jones, who read in thirty languages, could not 
read the simplest peasant’s face in its profounder and more 
subtle meanings, how may unlettered Ishmael hope to read 
the awful Chaldee of the Sperm Whale’s brow ? I but put 
that brow before you. Read it if you can. 


CHAPTER LXXX. 

THE NUT. 

If the Sperm Whale be physiognomically a Sphynx, to 
the phrenologist his brain seems that geometrical circle 
which it is impossible to square. 

In the full-grown creature the skull will measure at least 
twenty feet in length. Unhinge the lower jaw, and the 
side view of this skull is as the side view of a moderately 
inclined plane resting throughout on a level base. But in 
life — as we have elsewhere seen — this inclined plane is 
angularly filled up, and almost squared by the enormous 
superincumbent mass of the junk and sperm. At the high 
end the skull forms a crater to bed that part of the mass ; 
while under the long floor of this crater — in another cavity 


MOBY DICK. 


329 


seldom exceeding ten inches in length and as many in 
depth — reposes the mere handful of this monster’s brain. 
The brain is at least twenty feet from his apparent fore- 
head in life ; it is hidden away behind its vast outworks, 
like the innermost citadel within the amplified fortifications 
of Quebec. So like a choice casket is it secreted in him, 
that I have known some whalemen who peremptorily deny 
that the Sperm Whale has any other brain than that pal- 
pable semblance of one formed by the cubic-yards of his 
sperm magazine. Lying in strange folds, courses, and con- 
volutions, to their apprehensions, it seems more in keeping 
with the idea of his general might to regard that mystic 
part of him as the seat of his intelligence. 

It is plain, then, that phrenologically the head of this 
Leviathan, in the creature’s living intact state, is an entire 
delusion. As for his true brain, you can then see no indi- 
cations of it, nor feel any. The whale, like all things that 
are mighty, wears a false bow to the common w*orld. 

If you unload his skull of its spermy heaps and then take 
a rear view of its rear end, which is the high end, you will 
be struck by its resemblance to the human skull, beheld in 
the same situation, and from the same point of view. In- 
deed, place this reversed skull (scale down to the human 
magnitude) among a plate of men’s skulls, and you would 
involuntarily confound it with them; and remarking the 
depressions on one part of its summit, in phrenological 
phrase you would say — This man had no self-esteem, and 
no veneration. And by those negations, considered along 
with the affirmative fact of his prodigious bulk and power, 
you can best form to yourself the truest, though not the 
most exhilarating conception of what the most exalted 
potency is. 

But if from the comparative dimensions of the whale’s 
proper brain, you deem it incapable of being adequately 
charted, then I have another idea for you. If you atten- 
tively regard almost any quadruped’s spine, you will be 
struck with the resemblance of its vertebrae to a strung 
necklace of dwarfed skulls, all bearing rudimental resem- 
blance to the skull proper. It is a German conceit, that 
the vertebrae are absolutely undeveloped skulls. But the 
curious external resemblance, I take it the Germans .were 
not the first men to perceive. A foreign friend once pointed 
it out to me, in the skeleton of a foe he had slain, and with 
the vertebrae of which he was inlaying, in a sort of basso- 


330 


MOBY DICK. 


relievo, the beaked prow of his canoe. Now, I consider that 
the phrenologists have omitted an important thing in not 
pushing their investigations from the cerebellum through 
the spinal canal. For I believe that much of a man’s char- 
acter will be found betokened in his backbone. I would 
rather feel your spine than your skull, whoever you are. 
A thin joist of a spine never yet upheld a full and noble 
soul. I rejoice in my spine, as in the firm audacious staff 
of that flag which I fling half out to the world. 

Apply this spinal branch of phrenology to the Sperm 
Whale. His cranial cavity is continuous with the first 
neck- vertebra ; and in that vertebra the bottom of the 
spinal canal will measure ten inches across, being eight in 
height, and of a triangular figure with the base downwards. 
As it passes through the remaining vertebrae the canal 
tapers in size, but for a considerable distance remains of 
large capacity. Now, of course, this canal is filled with 
much the same strangely fibrous substance— the spinal 
cord — as the brain ; and directly communicates with the 
brain. And what is still more, for many feet after emerg- 
ing from the brain’s cavity, the spinal cord remains of an 
undecreasing girth, almost equal to that of the brain. 
Under all these circumstances, would it be unreasonable to 
survey and map out the whale’s spine phrenologically ? 
For, viewed in this light, the wonderful comparative small- 
ness of his brain proper is more than compensated by the 
wonderful comparative magnitude of his spinal cord. 

But leaving this hint to operate as it may with the 
phrenologists, I would merely assume the spinal theory for 
a moment, in reference to the Sperm Whale’s hump. This 
august hump, if I mistake not, rises over one of the larger 
vertebrae, and is, therefore, in some sort, the outer convex 
mould of it. From its relative situation then, I should call 
this high hump the organ of firmness or indomitableness 
in the Sperm Whale. And that the great monster is in- 
domitable, you will yet have reason to know. 


MOBY DICK. 


331 


CHAPTER LXXXI. 

THE PEQUOD MEETS THE VIRGIN. 

The predestinated day arrived, and we duly met the 
ship Jungfrau, Derick De Deer, master, of Bremen. 

At one time the greatest whaling people in the world, 
the Dutch and Germans are now among the least ; but here 
and there at very wide intervals of latitude and longitude, 
you still occasionally meet with their flag in the Pacific. 

For some reason, the Jungfrau seemed quite eager to pay 
her respects. While yet some distance from the Pequod, 
she rounded to, and dropping a boat, her captain was im- 
pelled towards us, impatiently standing in the bows in- 
stead of the stern. 

“What has he in his hand there?” cried Starbuck, 
pointing to something wavingly held by the German. 
“ Impossible! — a lamp-feeder! ” 

“Not that,” said Stubb, “no, no, it’s a coffee-pot, Mr. 
Starbuck; he’s coming off to make us our coffee, is the 
Yarman ; don’t you see that big tin can there alongside of 
him ? — that’s his boiling water. Oh ! he’s all right, is the 
Yarman.” 

“Go along with you,” cried Flask, “it’s a lamp-feeder 
and an oil-can. He’s out of oil, and has come a-begging.” 

However curious it may seem for an oil-ship to be 
borrowing oil on the whale-ground, and however much it 
may invertedly contradict the old proverb about carrying 
coals to Newcastle, yet sometimes such a thing really 
happens ; and in the present case Captain Derick De Deer 
did indubitably conduct a lampfeeder as Flask did declare. 

As he mounted the deck, Ahab abruptly accosted him, 
without at all heeding what he had in his hand ; but in his 
broken lingo, the German soon evinced his complete ignor- 
ance of the White Whale ; immediately turning the con- 
versation to his lamp-feeder and oil can, with some re- 
marks touching his having to turn into his hammock at 
night in profound darkness — his last drop of Bremen oil 
being gone, and not a single frying-fish yet captured to 
supply the deficiency ; concluding by hinting that his ship 


332 


MOBY DICK . 


was indeed what in the Fishery is technically called a 
clean one (that is, an empty one), well deserving the name 
of Jungfrau or the Virgin. 

His necessities supplied, Derick departed ; but he had 
not gained his ship’s side, when whales were almost sim- 
ultaneously raised from the mast-heads of both vessels ; 
and so eager for the chase was Derick, that without paus- 
ing to put his oil-can and lamp-feeder aboard, he slewed 
round his boat and made after the leviathan lamp-feeders. 

Now, the game having risen to leeward, he and the other 
three German boats that soon followed him, had considera- 
bly the start of the Pequod’s keels. There were eight 
whales, an average pod. Aware of their danger, they were 
going all abreast with great speed straight before the 
wind, rubbing their flanks as closely as so many spans of 
horses in harness. They left a great, wide wake, as though 
continually unrolling a great wide parchment upon the 
sea. 

Full in this rapid wake, and majiy fathoms in the rear, 
swam a huge, humped old bull, which by his compara- 
tively slow progress, as well as by the unusual yellowish 
incrustations overgrowing him, seemed afflicted with the 
jaundice, or some other infirmity. Whether this whale 
belonged to the pod in advance, seemed questionable ; for 
it is not customary for such venerable leviathans to be at 
all social. Nevertheless, he stuck to their wake, though 
indeed their back water must have retarded him, because 
the white-bone or swell at his broad muzzle was a dashed 
one, like the swell formed when two hostile currents meet. 
Ilis spout was short, slow, and la’ orious ; coming forth 
with a choking sort of gush, and spending itself in torn 
shreds, followed by strange subterranean commotions in 
him, which seemed to have egress at his other buried ex- 
tremity, causing the waters behind him to upbubble. 

“Who’s got some paregoric?” said Stubb, “he has the 
stomach-ache, I’m afraid. Lord, think of having half an 
acre of stomach-ache! Adverse winds are holding mad 
Christmas in him, boys. It’s the first foul wind I ever 
knew to blow from astern ; but look, did ever whale yaw 
so before ? it must be, he’s lost his tiller.” 

As an overladen Indiaman bearing down the Hindostan 
coast with a deck load of frightened horses, careens, buries, 
rolls, and wallows on her way ; so did this old whale heave 
his aged bulk, and now and then partly turning over on 


MOBY DICK. 


333 


his cumbrous rib-ends, expose the cause of his devious wake 
in the unnatural stump of his starboard fin. Whether he 
had lost that fin in battle, or had been born without it, it 
were hard to say. 

“ Only wait a bit, old chap, and I’ll give ye a sling for 
that wounded arm,” cried cruel Flask, pointing to the 
whale-line near him. 

“Mind he don’t sling thee with it,” cried Starbuck. 
“ Give way, or the German will have him.” 

W ith one intent all the combined rival boats were pointed 
for this one fish, because not only was he the largest, and 
therefore the most valuable whale, but he was nearest to 

them, and the other whales were ‘going with such great 
velocity, moreover, as almost to defy pursuit for the time. 
At this juncture the Pequod’s keels had shot by the three 
German boats last lowered ; but from the great start he had 
had, Derick’s boat still led the chase, though every moment 
neared by his foreign rivals. The only thing they feared, 
was, that from being already so nigh to his mark, he would 
be enabled to dart his iron before they could completely 
overtake and pass him. As for Derick, he seemed quite 
confident that this would be the case, and occasionally with 
a deriding gesture shook his lamp-feeder at the other 
boats. 

“ The ungracious and ungrateful dog ! ” cried Starbuck ; 
“ he mocks and dares me with the very poor-box I filled for 
him not five minutes ago ! ” — then m his old intense whisper 
. — “ Give way, greyhounds ! Dog to it ! ” 

“ I tell ye what it is, men,” — cried Stubb to his crew — “ it’s 
against my religion to get mad ; but I’d like to eat that vil- 
lainous Yarman — Pull — won’t ye ? Are ye going to let that 
rascal beat ye ? Do ye love brandy ? A hogshead of brandy, 

then, to the best man. Come, why don’t some of ye burst 
a blood-vessel ? Who’s that been dropping an anchor over- 
board — we don’t budge an inch — we’re becalmed. Halloo, 
here’s grass growing in the boat’s bottom — and by the Lord, 
the mast there’s budding. This won’t do, boys. Look at 
that Yarman ! The short and long of it is, men, will ye spit 
fire or not ? ” 

“ Oh ! see the suds he makes ! ” cried Flask, dancing up 
and down — “ What a hump — Oh, do pile on the beef — lays 
like a log ! Oh ! my lads, do spring — slap-jacks and quchogs 
for supper, you know, my lads — baked clams and muf- 
fins — oh, do, do, spring — he’s a hundred barreller— don’t 


334 


MOBY DICK. 


lose him now — don’t, oh, don't ! — see that Yarman — Oh! 
won’t ye pull for your duff, my lads — such a sog ! such a 
sogger ! Don’t ye love sperm ? There goes three thousand 
dollars, men ! — -a hank ! — a whole bank ! The hank of 
England ! — Oh, do , do , do / — Wliat’s that Yarman about 
now ? ” 

At this moment Derick was in the act of pitching his lamp- 
feeder at the advancing boats, and also his oil-can ; perhaps 
with the double view of retarding his rival’s way, and at 
the same time economically accelerating his own by the 
momentary impetus of the backward toss. 

“ The unmannerly Dutch dogger ! ” cried Stubb. “ Pull 
now, men, like fifty thousand line-of-battle-ship loads of red- 
haired devils. What d’ye say, Tashtego ; are you the man 
to snap your spine in two-and-twenty pieces for the honour 
of old Gayheacl ? What d’ye say ? ” 

“ I say, pull like god-dam,” — cried the Indian. 

Fiercely, but evenly incited by the taunts of the German, 
the Pequod’s three boats now began ranging almost abreast ; 
and, so disposed, momentarily neared him. In that fine, 
loose, chivalrous attitude of the headsman when drawing 
near to his prey, the three mates stood up proudly, occa- 
sionally backing the after oarsman with an exhilarating cry 
of, “ There she slides, now ! Hurrah for the white-asli 
breeze! Down with the Yarman ! Sail over him ! ” 

But so decided an original start had Derick had, that spite 
of all their gallantry, he would have proved the victor in 
this race, had not a righteous judgment descended upon 
him in a crab which caught the blade of his midship oars- 
man. While this clumsy lubber was striving to free his 
white-ash, and while, in consequence, Derick’s boat was nigh 
to capsizing, and he thundering away at his men in a mighty 
rage ; — that was a good time for Starbuck, Stubb, and Flask. 
With a shout, they took a mortal start forwards, and slant- 
ingly ranged up on the German’s quarter. An instant more, 
and all four boats were diagonally in the whale’s imme- 
diate wake, while stretching from them, on both sides, was 
the foaming swell that he made. 

It was a terrific, most pitiable, and maddening sight. 
The whale was now going head out, and sending his spout 
before him in a continual tormented jet ; while his one poor 
fin beat his side in an agony of fright. Now to this hand, 
now to that, he yawed in his faltering flight, and still at 
every billow that- he broke, he spasmodically sank in the 


MOBY DICK. 


335 


sea, or sideways rolled towards the sky liis one heating fin. 
So have I seen a bird with clipped wing making affrighted 
broken circles in the air, vainly striving to escape the pirat- 
ical hawks. But the bir(j. has a voice, and with plaintive 
cries will make known her fear ; but the fear of this vast 
dumb brute of the sea, was chained up and enchanted in 
him ; he had no voice, save that choking respiration through 
his spiracle, and this made the sight of him unspeakably 
pitiable ; while still, in his amazing bulk, portcullis jaw, and 
omnipotent tail, there was enough to appal the stoutest man 
who so pitied. 

Seeing now that but a very few moments more would 
give the Pequod’s boats the advantage, and rather than be 
thus foiled of his game, Derick chose to hazard what to 
him must have seemed a most unusually long dart, ere the 
last chance would forever escape. 

But no sooner did his harpooner stand up for the stroke, 
than all three tigers — Queequeg, Tashtego, Daggoo — instinc- 
tively sprang to their feet, and standing in a diagonal row, 
simultaneously pointed their barbs; and darted over the 
head of the German harpooner, their three Nantucket irons 
entered the whale. Blinding vapours of foam and white- 
fire ! The three boats, in the first fury of the whale’s head- 
long rush, bumped the German’s aside with such force, that 
both Derick and his baffled harpooner spilled out, and 
sailed over by the three flying keels. 

“Don’t be afraid, my butter-boxes,” cried Stubb, casting 
a passing glance upon them as he shot by ; “ ye’ll be picked 
up presently — all right — I saw some sharks astern — St. 
Bernard’s dogs, you know — relieve distressed travellers. 
Hurrah ! this is the way to sail now. Every keel a sun- 
beam ! Hurrah ! — Here we go like three tin kettles at the 
tail of a mad cougar ! This puts me in mind of fastening 
to an elephant in a tilbury on a plain — makes the wheel- 
spokes fly, boys, when you fasten to him that way ; and 
there’s danger of being pitched out too, when you strike a 
hill. Hurrah ! this is the way a fellow feels when he’s go- 
ing to Davy Jones — all a rush down an endless inclined 
plane ! Hurrah ! this whale carries the everlasting mail ! ” 

But the monster’s run was a brief one. Giving a sudden 
gasp, he tumultuously sounded. With a grating rush, the 
three lines flew round the loggerheads with such a force as 
to gouge deep grooves in them ; while so fearful were the 
harpooners that this rapid sounding would soon exhaust 


33G 


MOBY DICK. 


the lines, that using all their dexterous might, they caught 
repeated smoking turns with the rope to hold on ; till at 
last — owing to the perpendicular strain from the head-lined 
chocks of the boats, whence the three ropes went straight 
down into the blue — the gunwales of the bows were almost 
even with the water, while the three sterns tilted high in 
the air. And the whale soon ceasing to sound, for some 
time they remained in that attitude, fearful of expending 
more line, though the position was a little ticklish. But 
though boats have been taken down and lost in this way, 
yet it is this “ holding on,” as it is called ; this hooking up 
by the sharp barbs of his live flesh from the back; this it 
is that often torments the Leviathan into soon rising again 
to meet the sharp lance of his foes. Yet not to speak of 
the peril of the thing, it is to be doubted whether this 
course is always the best ; for it is but reasonable to pre- 
sume, that the longer the stricken whale stays under water, 
the more he is exhausted. Because, owing to the enormous 
surface of him — in a full grown sperm whale something 
less than 2000 square feet — the pressure of the water is im- 
mense. We all know what an astonishing atmospheric 
weight we ourselves stand up under ; even here, above- 
ground, in the air ; how vast, then, the burden of a whale, 
bearing on his back a column of two hundred fathoms of 
ocean ! It must at least equal the weight of fifty atmos- 
pheres. One whaleman has estimated it at the weight of 
twenty line-of-battle ships, with all their guns, and stores, 
and men on board. 

As the three boats lay there on that gently rolling sea, 
gazing down into its eternal blue noon ; and as not a single 
groan or cry of any sort, nay, not so much as a ripple or a 
bubble came up from its depths ; what landsman would 
have thought, that beneath all that silence and placidity, 
the utmost monster of the seas was writhing and wrench- 
ing in agony ! Not eight inches of perpendicular rope were 
visible at the bows. Seems it credible that by three such 
thin threads the great Leviathan was suspended like the 
big weight to an eight-day clock. Suspended? and to 
what? To three bits of board. Is this the creature of 
whom it was once so triumphantly said — “ Canst thou fill 
his skin with barbed irons? or his head with fish-spears? 
The sword of him that layeth at him cannot hold, the 
spear, the dart, nor the habergeon : he esteemeth iron as 
straw; the arrow cannot make him flee; darts are counted 


MOBY DICK. 


337 


as stubble ; he laugheth at the shaking of a spear ! ” This 
the creature ? this he ? Oh ! that unfulfilments should follow 
the prophets. For with the strength of a thousand thighs 
in his tail, Leviathan had run his head under the moun- 
tains of the sea, to hide him from the Pequod’s fish-spears ! 

In that sloping afternoon sunlight, the shadows that the 
three boats sent down beneath the surface, must have been 
long enough and broad enough to shade half Xerxes’ army. 
Who can tell how appalling to the wounded whale must 
have been such huge phantoms flitting over his head ! 

“ Stand by, men ; he stirs,” cried Starbuck, as the three 
lines suddenly vibrated in the water, distinctly conducting 
upwards to them, as by magnetic wires, the life and death 
throbs of the whale, so that every oarsman felt them in his 
seat. The next moment, relieved in great part from the 
downward strain at the bows, the boats gave a sudden 
bounce upwards, as a small icefield will, when a dense herd 
of white bears are scared from it into the sea. 

“ Haul in ! Haul in ! ” cried Starbuck again ; “ he’s 
rising.” 

The lines, of which, hardly an instant before, not one 
hand’s-breadth could have been gained, were now in long 
quick coils flung back all dripping into the boats, and soon 
the whale broke water within two ship’s lengths of the 
hunters. 

His motions plainly denoted his extreme exhaustion. In 
most land animals there are certain valves or flood-gates in 
many of their veins, whereby, when wounded, the blood is 
in some degree at least instantly shut off in certain direc- 
tions. Not so with the whale ; one of whose peculiarities 
it is to have an entire non-valvular structure of the blood- 
vessels, so that when pierced even by so small a point as a 
harpoon, a deadly drain is at once begun upon his whole 
arterial system ; and when this is heightened by the ex- 
traordinary pressure of water at a great distance below the 
surface, his life may be said to pour from him in incessant 
streams. Yet so vast is the quantity of blood in him, and 
so distant and numerous its interior fountains, that he will 
keep thus bleeding and bleeding for a considerable period ; 
even as in a drought a river will flow, whose source is in the 
well-springs of far-off and undiscernible hills. Even now, 
when the boats pulled upon this whale, and perilously drew 
over his swaying flukes, and the lances were darted into 
him, they were followed by steady jets from the new made 


338 


MOBY DICK. 


wound, which kept continually playing, while the natural 
spout-hole in his head was only at intervals, however rapid, 
sending its affrightedMnoisture into the air. From this last 
vent no blood yet came, because no vital part of him had 
thus far been struck. His life, as they significantly call it, 
was untouched. 

As the boats now more closely surrounded him, the whole 
upper part of his form, with much of it that is ordinarily 
submerged, was plainly revealed. His eyes, or rather the 
places where his eyes had been, were beheld. As strange 
misgrown masses gather in the knot-holes of the noblest 
oaks when prostrate, so from the points which the whale’s 
eyes had once occupied, now protruded blind bulbs, horribly 
pitiable to see. But pity there was none. For all his old 
age, and his one arm, and his blind eyes, he must die the 
death and be murdered, in order to light the gay bridals and 
other merry-makings of men, and also to illuminate the sol- 
emn churches that preach unconditional inoffensiveness by 
all to all. Still rolling in his blood, at last he partially dis- 
closed a strangely discoloured bunch or protuberance, the 
size of a bushel, low down on the flank. 

“ A nice spot,” cried Flask ; just let me prick him there 
once.” 

“ Avast ! ” cried Starbuck, “ there’s no need of that ! ” 

But humane Starbuck was too late. At the instant of 
the dart an ulcerous jet shot from this cruel wound, and 
goaded by it into more than sufferable anguish, the whale 
now spouting thick blood, with swift fury blindly darted 
at the craft, bespattering them and their glorying crews 
all over with showers of gore, capsizing Flask’s boat and 
marring the bows. It was his death-stroke. For, by this 
time, so spent was he by loss of blood, that he helplessly 
rolled away from the wreck he had made ; lay panting on 
his side, impotently flapped with his stumped fin, then 
over and over slowly revolved like a waning world ; turned 
up the white secrets of his belly ; lay like a log, and died. 
It was most piteous, that last expiring spout. As when 
by unseen hands the water is gradually drawn off from 
some mighty fountain, and with half-stifled melancholy 
gurglings the spray-column lowers and lowers to the ground 
— so the last long dying spout of the whale. 

Soon, while the crews were awaiting the arrival of the 
ship, the body showed symptoms of sinking with all its 
treasures unrifled. Immediately, by Starbuck’s orders, 


MOB Y DICK. 


339 


lines were secured to it at different points, so that ere long 
every boat was a buoy ; the sunken whale being suspended 
a few inches beneath them by the courts. By very heedful 
management, when the ship drew nigh, the whale was 
transferred to her side, and was strongly secured there by 
the stiffest fluke-chains, for it was plain that unless artifi- 
cially upheld, the body would at once sink to the bottom. 

It so chanced that almost upon first cutting into him with 
the spade, the entire length of a corroded harpoon was 
found imbedded in his flesh, on the lower part of the bunch 
before described. But as the stumps of harpoons are fre- 
quently found in the dead bodies of captured whales, with 
the flesh perfectly healed around them, and no prominence 
of any kind to denote their place ; therefore, there must 
needs have been some other unknown reason in the present 
case fully to account for the ulceration alluded to. But 
still more curious was the fact of a lance-head of stone 
being found in him, not far from the buried iron, the flesh 
perfectly firm about it. Who had darted that stone lance ? 
And when ? It might have been darted by some Nor’- W est 
Indian long before America was discovered. 

What other marvels might have been rummaged out of 
this monstrous cabinet there is no telling. But a sudden 
stop was put to further discoveries, by the ship’s being un- 
precedentedly dragged over, sideways to the sea, owing to 
the body’s immensely increasing tendency to sink. How- 
ever, Starbuck, who had the ordering of affairs, hung on to it 
to the last ; hung on to it so resolutely, indeed, that when at 
length the ship would have been capsized, if still persist- 
ing in locking arms with the body ; then, when the com- 
mand was given to break clear from it, such was the im- 
movable strain upon the timber-heads to which the fluke- 
chains and cables were fastened, that it was impossible to 
cast them off. Meantime everything in the Pequod was 
aslant. To cross to the other side of the deck was like walk- 
ing up the steep gabled roof of a house. The ship groaned 
and gasped. Many of the ivory inlayings of her bulwarks 
and cabins were started from their places, by the unnatural 
dislocation. In vain handspikes and crows were brought 
to bear upon the immovable fluke-chains, to pry them adrift 
from the timber-heads ; and so low had the whale now set- 
tled that the submerged ends could not be at all approached, 
while every moment whole tons of ponderosity seemed 


MOB Y DICK . 


340 

added to the sinking bulk, and the ship seemed on the point 
of going over. 

“ Hold on, hold onptvon’t ye ? ” cried Stubb to the body, 
“ don’t be in such a devil of a hurry to sink ! By thunder, 
men, we must do something or go for it. No use prying 
there ; avast, I say with your handspikes, and run one of 
ye for a prayer-book and a pen-knife, and cut the big 
chains.” 

“Knife? Aye, aye,” cried Queequeg, and seizing the 
carpenter’s heavy hatchet, he leaned out of a porthole, and 
steel to iron, began slashing at the largest fluke-chains. 
But a few strokes, full of sparks, were given, when the ex- 
ceeding strain effected the rest. With a terrific snap, every 
fastening went adrift ; the ship righted, the carcase sank. 

Now, this occasional inevitable sinking of the recently 
killed Sperm Whale is a very curious thing ; nor has any 
fisherman yet adequately accounted for it. Usually the 
dead Sperm Whale floats with great buoyancy, with its 
side or belly considerably elevated above the surface. If 
the only whales that thus sank were old, meagre, and 
broken-hearted creatures, their pads of lard diminished and 
all their bones heavy and rheumatic ; then you might with 
some reason assert that this sinking is caused by an un- 
common specific gravity in the fish so sinking, consequent 
upon this absence of buoyant matter in him. But it is not 
so. For young whales, in the highest health, and swelling 
with noble aspirations, prematurely cut off in the warm 
flush and May of life, with all their panting lard about 
them ; even these brawny, buoyant heroes do sometimes 
sink. 

Be it said, however, that the Sperm Whale is far less lia- 
ble to this accident than any other species. Where one of 
that sort go down, twenty Right Whales do. This differ- 
ence in the species is no doubt imputable in no small degree 
to the greater quantity of bone in the Right Whale ; his 
Venetian blinds alone sometimes weighing more than a 
ton ; from this incumbrance the Sperm Whale is wholly 
free. But there are instances where, after the lapse of 
many hours or several days, the sunken whale rises again, 
more buoyant than in life. But the reason of this is obvi- 
ous. Gases are generated in him ; he swells to a prodigi- 
ous magnitude ; becomes a sort of animal balloon. A line- 
of-battle ship could hardly keep him under then. In the 
Shore Whaling, on soundings, among the Bays of New 


MOB Y DICK. 


341 

Zealand, when a Right Whale gives token of sinking, they 
fasten buoys to him, with plenty of rope ; so that when 
the body has gone down, they know where to look for it 
when it shall have ascended again. 

It was not long after the sinking of the body that a cry 
was heard from the Pequod’s mast-heads, announcing that 
the Jungfrau was again lowering her boats ; though the 
only spout in sight was that of a Fin-Back, belonging to 
the species of uncapturable whales, because of its incred- 
ible power of swimming. Nevertheless, the Fin-Back’s 
spout is so similar to the Sperm Whale’s, that by unskil- 
ful fishermen it is often mistaken for it. And consequently 
Derick and all his host were now in valiant chase of this 
unnearable brute. The Virgin crowding all sail, made after 
her four young keels, and thus they all disappeared far to 
leeward, still in bold, hopeful chase. 

Oh ! many are the Fin-Backs, and many are the Dericks, 
my friend. 


CHAPTER L XXXII. 

THE HONOR AND GLORY OF WHALING. 

There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderli- 
ness is the true method. 

The more I dive into this matter of whaling, and push 
my researches up to the very spring-head of it, so much 
the more am I impressed with its great honourableness and 
antiquity ; and especially when I find so many great demi- 
gods and heroes, prophets of all sorts, who one way or other 
have shed distinction upon it, I am transported with the 
reflection that I myself belong, though but subordinated, 
to so emblazoned a fraternity. 

The gallant Perseus, a son of Jupiter, was the first whale- 
man ; and to the eternal honour of our calling be it said, that 
the first whale attacked by our brotherhood was not killed 
with any sordid intent, those were the knightly days of 
our profession, when we only bore arms to succour the dis- 
tressed, and not to fill men’s lamp-feeders. Every one 
knows the fine story of Perseus and Andromeda; how the 
lovely Andromeda, the daughter of a king, was tied to a 
rock on the sea-coast, and as Leviathan was in the very act 


342 


MOBY DICK. 


of carrying her off, Perseus, the prince of whalemen, in- 
trepidly advancing, harpooned the monster, and delivered 
and married the maid. It was an admirable artistic exploit, 
rarely achieved by the best harpooners of the present day ; 
inasmuch as this Leviathan was slain at the very first dart. 
And let no man doubt this Arkite story ; for in the ancient 
Joppa, now Jaffa, on the Syrian coast, in one of the Pagan 
temples, there stood for many ages the vast skeleton of a 
whale, which the city’s legends and all the inhabitants as- 
serted^to be the identical bones of the monster that Perseus 
slew. “ When the Romans took Joppa, the same skeleton 
was carried to Italy in triumph. What seems most singu- 
lar and suggestively important in this story, is this : it was 
from Joppa that Jonah set sail. 

Akin to the adventure of Perseus and Andromeda, — in- 
deed, by some supposed to be indirectly derived from it — is 
that famous story of St. George and the Dragon ; which 
dragon I maintain to have been a whale ; for in many old 
chronicles whales and dragons are strangely jumbled to- 
gether, and often stand for each other. “ Thou art as a 
lion of the waters, and as a dragon of the sea,” saith 
Ezekiel ; hereby, plainly meaning a whale ; in truth, some ver- 
sions of the Bible use that word itself. Besides, it would 
much subtract from the glory of the exploit had St. George 
but encountered a crawling reptile of the land, instead of 
doing battle with the great monster of the deep. Any man 
may kill a snake, but only a Perseus, a St. George, a Coffin, 
have the heart in them to march boldly up to a whale. 

Let not the modern paintings of this scene mislead us ; 
for though the creature encountered by that valiant wh ale- 
man of old is vaguely represented of a griffin-like shape, 
and though the battle is depicted on land and the saint on 
horseback, yet considering the great ignorance of those 
times, when the true form of the whale was unknown to 
artists ; and considering that as in Perseus’ case, St. George’s 
whale might have crawled up out of the sea on (he beach ; 
and considering that the animal ridden by St. George might 
have been only a large seal, or sea-horse ; bearing all this 
in mind, it will not appear altogether incompatible with the 
sacred legend and the ancientest drafts of the scene, to 
hold this so-called dragon no other than the great Levia- 
than himself. In fact, placed before the strict and pierc- 
ing truth, this whole story will fare like that fish, flesh, and 
fowl idol of the Philistines, Dagon by name ; who being 


MOBY DICK. 


343 


planted before the ark of Israel, his horse’s head and both 
the palms of his hands fell off from him, and only the stump 
or fishy part of him remained. Thus, then, one of our own 
noble stamp, even a whaleman, is the tutelary guardian of 
England ; and by good rights, we liarpooners of Nantucket 
should be enrolled in the most noble order of St. George. 
And therefore, let not the knights of that honourable com- 
pany (none of whom, I venture to say, have ever had to do 
with a whale like their great patron), let them never eye a 
Nantucketer with disdain, since even in our woollen frocks 
and tarred trowsers we are much better entitled to St. 
George’s decoration than they. 

Whether to admit Hercules among us or not, concerning 
this I long remained dubious : for though according to the 
Greek mythologies, that antique Crockett and Kit Carson 
—that brawny doer of rejoicing good deeds, was swallowed 
down and thrown up by a whale ; still, whether that strictly 
makes a whaleman of him, that might be mooted. It no- 
where appears that he ever actually harpooned his fish, un- 
less, indeed, from the inside. Nevertheless, he may be 
deemed a sort of involuntary whaleman ; at any rate the 
whale caught him, if he did not the whale. I claim him 
for one of our clan. 

But, by the best contradictory authorities, this Grecian 
story of Hercules and the whale is considered to be derived 
from the still more ancient Hebrew story of Jonah and the 
whale ; and vice versa ; certainly they are very similar. If 
I claim the demi-god then, why not the prophet ? 

Nor do heroes, saints, demigods, and prophets alone com- 
prise the whole roll of our order. Our grand master is still 
to be named ; for like royal kings of old times, we find the 
head waters of our fraternity in nothing short of the great 
gods themselves. That wondrous oriental story is now to 
be rehearsed from the Shaster, which gives us the dread 
Vishnu, one of the three persons in the godhead of the 
Hindoos ; gives us this divine Vishnu himself for our Lord ; 
— Vishnu, who, by the first of his ten earthly incarnations, 
has for ever set apart and sanctified the whale. When 
Brahm, or the God of gods, saitli the Shaster, resolved to 
recreate the world after one of its periodical dissolutions, 
he gave birth to Vishnu, to preside over the work ; but the 
Vedas, or mystical books, whose perusal would seem to have 
been indispensable to Vishnu before beginning the creation, 
and which therefore must have contained something in the 


344 


MOBY DICK. 


shape of practical hints to young architects, these Vedas 
were lying at the bottom of the water ; so Vishnu became 
incarnate in a whale, and sounding down in him to the ut- 
termost depths, rescued the sacred volumes. Was not this 
Vishnu a whaleman, then ? even as a man who rides a horse 
is called a horseman ? 

Perseus, St. George, Hercules, Jonah and Vishnu ! there's 
a member-roll for you ! What club but the whaleman’s can 
head off like that ? 


CHAPTER LXXXIII. 

JONAH HISTORICALLY REGARDED. 

Reference was made to the historical story of Jonah and 
the whale in the preceding chapter. Now some Nantuck- 
eters rather distrust this historical story of Jonah and the 
whale. But then there were some sceptical Greeks and 
Romans, who, standing out from the orthodox pagans of 
their times, equally doubted the story of Hercules and the 
whale, and Arion and the dolphin ; and yet their doubting 
those traditions did not make those traditions one whit the 
less facts, for all that. 

One old Sag- Harbour whaleman’s chief reason for ques- 
tioning the Hebrew story was this : — He had one of those 
quaint old fashioned Bibles, embellished with curious, un- 
scientific plates ; one of which represented Jonah’s whale 
with two spouts in his head — a peculiarity only true with 
respect to a species of the Leviathan (the Right Whale, 
and the varieties of that order), concerning which the fish- 
ermen have this saying, “ A penny roll would choke him 
his swallow is so very small. But, to this, Bishop Jebb’s 
anticipative answer is ready. It is not necessary, hints the 
Bishop, that we consider Jonah as tombed in the whale’s 
belly, but as temporarily lodged in some part of his mouth. 
And this seems reasonable enough in the good Bishop. 
For truly, the Right Whale’s mouth would accommodate a 
couple of wliist-tables, and comfortably seat all the players. 
Possibly, too, Jonah might have ensconced himself in a 
hollow tooth ; but, on second thoughts, the Right Whale is 
toothless. 

Another reason which Sag-Harbour (he went by that name) 


MOBY DICK. 


845 


urged for his want of faith in this matter of the prophet, 
was something obscurely in reference to his incarcerated 
body and the whale’s gastric juices. But this objection 
likewise falls to the ground, because a German exegetist 
supposed that J onah must have taken refuge in the floating 
body of a dead whale — even as the French soldiers in the 
Russian campaign turned their dead horses into tents, and 
crawled into them. Besides, it has been divined by other 
continental commentators, that when Jonah was thrown 
overboard from the Joppa ship, he straightway effected his 
escape to another vessel near by, some vessel with a whale 
for a figure-head ; and, I would add, possibly called “ The 
Whale,” as some craft are nowadays christened the “ Shark,” 
the “ Gull,” the “ Eagle.” Nor have there been wanting 
learned exegetists who have opined that the whale men- 
tioned in the book of Jonah merely meant a life-preserver 
— an inflated bag of wind — which the endangered prophet 
swam to, and so was saved from a watery doom. Poor Sag- 
Harbour, therefore, seems worsted all around. But he had 
still another reason for his want of faith. It was this, if I 
remember right : Jonah was swallowed by the whale in the 
Mediterranean Sea, and after three days he was vomited up 
somewhere within three days’ journey of Nineveh, a city 
on the Tigris, very much more than three days’ journey 
across from the nearest point of the Mediterranean coast. 
How is that ? 

But was there no other way for the whale to land the 
prophet within that short distance of Nineveh ? Yes. He 
might have carried him round by the way of the Cape of 
Good Hope. But not to speak of the passage through the 
whole length of the Mediterranean, and another passage up 
the Persian Gulf and Red Sea, such a supposition would in- 
volve the complete circumnavigation of all Africa in three 
days, not to speak of the Tigris waters, near the site of Nin- 
eveh, being too shallow for any whale to swim in. Besides, 
this idea of Jonah’s weathering the Cape of Good Hope at 
so early a day would wrest the honour of the discovery of 
that great headland from Bartholomew Diaz, its reputed 
discoverer, and so make modern history a liar. 

But all these foolish arguments of old Sag-Harbour only 
evinced his foolish pride of reason — a thing still more repre- 
hensible in him, seeing that he had but little learning ex- 
cept what he had picked up from the sun and the sea. I 
say it only shows his foolish, impious pride, and abominable. 


346 


MOBY DICK. 


devilish rebellion against the reverend clergy. For by a 
Portuguese Catholic priest, this very idea of Jonah’s going 
to Nineveh via the Cape of Good Hope was advanced as a 
signal magnification of the general miracle. And so it was. 
Besides, to this day, the highly enlightened Turks devoutly 
believe in the historical story of Jonah. And some three 
centuries ago, an English traveller in old Harris’s Voyages, 
speaks of a Turkish Mosque built in honour of Jonah, in 
which mosque was a miraculous lamp that burnt without 
any oil. 


CHAPTER LXXXIV. 

PITCHPOLING. 

To make them run easily and swiftly, the axles of car- 
riages are anointed ; and for much the same purpose, some 
whalers perform an analogous operation upon their boat ; 
they grease the bottom. Nor is it to be doubted that as 
such a procedure can do no harm, it may possibly be of no 
contemptible advantage ; considering that oil and water are 
hostile ; that oil is a sliding thing, and that the object in 
view is to make the boat slide bravely. Queequeg believed 
strongly in anointing his boat, and one morning not long 
after the German ship Jungfrau disappeared, took more 
than customary pains in that occupation ; crawling under 
its bottom, where it hung over the side, and rubbing in 
the unctuousness as though diligently seeking to insure a 
crop of hair from the craft’s bald keel. He seemed to be 
working in obedience to some particular presentiment. Nor 
did it remain unwarranted by the event. 

Towards noon whales were raised ; but so soon as the ship 
sailed down to them, they turned and fled with swift pre- 
cipitancy ; a disordered flight, as of Cleopatra’s barges from 
Actium. 

Nevertheless, the boats pursued, and Stubb’s was fore- 
most. By great exertion, Tashtego at last succeeded in 
planting one iron ; but the stricken whale, without at all 
sounding, still continued his horizontal flight, with added 
fleetness. Such unintermitted strainings upon the planted 
iron must sooner or later inevitably extract it. It became 
imperative to lance the flying whale, or be content to lose 


MOBY DICK. 


347 


him. But to haul the boat up to his flank was im- 
possible, he swam so fast and furious. What then re- 
mained ? 

Of all the wondrous devices and dexterities, the sleights 
of hand and countless subtleties, to which the veteran 
whaleman is so often forced, none exceed that fine ma- 
noeuvre with the lance called pitchpoling. Small sword, 
or broad sword, in all its exercises boasts nothing like 
it. It is only indispensable with an inveterate running 
whale; its grand fact and feature is the wonderful dis- 
tance to which the long lance is accurately darted from a 
violently rocking, jerking boat, under extreme headway. 
Steel and wood included, the entire spear is some ten or 
twelve feet in length ; the staff is much slighter than that 
of the harpoon, and also of a lighter material — pine. It is 
furnished with a small rope called a warp, of considerable 
length, by which it can be hauled back to the hand after 
darting. 

But before going further, it is important to mention here, 
that though the harpoon may be pitchpoled in the same 
w'ay with the lance, yet it is seldom done ; and when done, 
is still less frequently successful, on account of the greater 
weight and inferior length of the harpoon as compared 
with the lance, which in effect become serious drawbacks. 
As a general thing, therefore, you must first get fast to a 
whale, before any pitchpoling comes into play. 

Look now at Stubb ; a man who from his humorous, de- 
liberate coolness and equanimity in the direst emergencies, 
was specially qualified to excel in pitchpoling. Look at 
him ; he stands upright in the tossed bow of the flying boat ; 
wrapt in fleecy foam, the towing whale is forty feet ahead. 
Handling the long lance lightly, glancing twice or thrice 
along its length to see if it be exactly straight, Stubb 
whistlingly gathers up the coil of the warp in one hand, so 
as to secure its free end in his grasp, leaving the rest 
unobstructed. Then holding the lance full before his 
waistband’s middle, he levels it at the whale ; when, cover- 
ing him with it, he steadily depresses the butt-end in his 
hand, thereby elevating the point till the weapon stands 
fairly balanced upon his palm, fifteen feet in the air. He 
minds you somewhat of a juggler, balancing a long 
staff on his chin. Next moment with a rapid, nameless 
impulse, in a superb lofty arch the bright steel spans 
the foaming distance, and quivers in the life spot of the 


348 


MOBY DICK. 


whale. Instead of sparkling water, he now spouts red 
blood. 

“ That drove the spigot out of him ! ” cries Stubb. “ ’Tis 
July’s immortal Fourth ; all fountains must run wine to- 
day ! Would now, it were old Orleans whiskey, or old 
Ohio, or unspeakable old Monongahela ! Then, Tashtego, 
lad, I’d have ye hold a canakin to the jet, and we’d 
drink round it ! Yea, verily, hearts alive, we’d brew 
choice punch in the spread of his spout-hole there, 
and from that live punch-bowl quaff the living stuff ! ” 

Again and again to such gamesome talk, the dexterous 
dart is repeated, the spear returning to its master like a 
greyhound held in skilful leash. The agonised whale goes 
into his flurry ; the tow-line is slackened, and the pitchpoler 
dropping astern, folds his hands, and mutely watches the 
monster die. 


CHAPTER LXXXY. 

THE FOUNTAIN. 

That for six thousand years — and no one knows how 
many millions of ages before — the great whales should have 
been spouting all over the sea, and sprinkling and mystify- 
ing the gardens of the deep, as with so many sprinkling or 
mystifying pots ; and that for some centuries back, thou- 
sands of hunters should have been close by the fountain of 
the whale, watching these sprinklings and spoutings — that 
all this should be, and yet, that down to this blessed minute 
(fifteen and a quarter minutes past one o’clock p. m. of this 
sixteenth day of December, a.d. 1851), it should still remain a 
problem, whether these spoutings are, after all, really water, 
or nothing but vapour — this is surely a noteworthy thing. 

Let us, then, look at this matter, along with some inter- 
esting items contingent. Every ope knows that by the pe- 
culiar cunning of their gills, the finny tribes in general 
breathe the air which at all times is combined with the 
element in which they swim ; hence, a herring or a cod 
might live a century, and never once raise his head above 
the surface. But owing to his marked internal structure 
which gives him regular lungs, like a human being’s, the 


MOBY DICK. 


349 


whale can only live by inhaling the disengaged air in the 
open atmosphere. Wherefore the necessity for his periodi- 
cal visits to the upper world. But he cannot in any degree 
breathe through his mouth, for, in his ordinary attitude, 
the Sperm Whale’s mouth is buried at least eight feet be- 
neath the surface ; and what is still more, his windpipe has 
no connection with his mouth. No, he breathes through his 
spiracle alone ; and this is on the top of his head. 

If I say, that in any creature breathing is only a function 
indispensable to vitality, inasmuch as it withdraws from 
the air a certain element, which being subsequently brought 
into contact with the blood imparts to the blood its vivify- 
ing principle, I do not think I shall err ; though I may pos- 
sibly use some superfluous scientific words. Assume it, 
and it follows that if all the blood in a man could be aerated 
with one breath, he might then seal up his nostrils and 
not fetch another for a considerable time. That is to say, 
he would then live without breathing. Anomalous as it 
may seem, this is precisely the case with the whale, who 
systematically lives, by intervals, his full hour and more 
(when at the bottom) without drawing a single breath, or 
so much as in any way inhaling a particle of air ; for, re- 
member, he has no gills. How is this ? Between his ribs 
and on each side of his spine he is supplied with a remark- 
able involved Cretan labyrinth of vermicelli-like vessels, 
which vessels, when he quits the surface, are completely 
distended with oxygenated blood. So that for an hour or 
more, a thousand fathoms in the sea, he carries a surplus 
stock of vitality in him, just as the camel crossing the 
waterless desert carries a surplus supply of drink for fu- 
ture use in its four supplementary stomachs. The anatom- 
ical fact of this labyrinth is indisputable ; and that the 
supposition founded upon it is reasonable and true, seems 
the more cogent to me, when I consider the otherwise in- 
explicable obstinacy of that leviathan in having his spout- 
ings out, as the fishermen phrase it. This is what I 
mean. If unmolested, upon rising to the surface, the Sperm 
Whale will continue there for a period of time exactly uni- 
form with all his other unmolested risings. Say he stays 
eleven minutes, and jets seventy times, that is, respires 
seventy breaths ; then whenever he rises again, he will be 
sure to have his seventy breaths over again, to a minute. 
Now, if after he fetches a few breaths you alarm him, so 
that he sounds, he will be always dodging up again to make 


350 


MOBY DICK. 


good his regular allowance of air. And not till those sev- 
enty breaths are told, will he finally go down to stay out his 
full term below. Remark, however, that in different indi- 
viduals these rates are different ; but in any one they are 
alike. Now, why should the whale thus insist upon having 
his spoutings out, unless it be to replenish his reservoir of 
air, ere descending for good ? How obvious is it, too, that 
this necessity for the whale’s rising exposes him to all the 
fatal hazards of the chase. For not by hook or by net 
could this vast leviathan be caught, when sailing a thou- 
sand fathoms beneath the sunlight. Not so much thy skill, 
then, O hunter, as the great necessities that strike the vic- 
tory to thee ! 

In man, breathing is incessantly going on — one breath 
only serving for two or three pulsations ; so that whatever 
other business he has to attend to, waking or sleeping, 
breathe he must or die he will. But the Sperm Whale only 
breathes about one seventh or Sunday of his time. 

It has been said that the whale only breathes through his 
spout-hole ; if it could truthfully be added that his spouts 
are mixed with water, then I opine we should be furnished 
with the reason why his sense of smell seems obliterated in 
him ; for the only thing about him that at all answers to his 
nose is that identical spout-hole ; and being so clogged with 
two elements, it could not be expected to have the power 
of smelling. But owing to the mystery of the spout — 
whether it be water or whether it be vapour — no absolute 
certainty can as yet be arrived at on this head. Sure it is, 
nevertheless that the Sperm Whale has no proper olfac- 
tories. But what does he want of them ? No roses, nor 
violets, no Cologne- water in the sea. 

Furthermore, as his windpipe solely opens into the tube 
of his spouting canal, and as that long canal — like the grand 
Erie Canal — is furnished with a sort of locks (that open and 
shut) for the downward retention of air or the upward exclu- 
sion of water, therefore the whale has no voice ; unless you 
insult him by saying, that when he so strangely rumbles, 
he talks through his nose. But then again, what has the 
whale to say ? Seldom have I known any profound being 
that had anything to say to this world, unless forced to I 
stammer out something by way of getting a living. Oh ! 
happy that the world is such an excellent listener ! 

Now, the spouting canal of the Sperm Whale, chiefly 
intended as it is for the conveyance of air, and for several 


MOBY DICK. 


351 


feet laid along, horizontally, just beneath the upper surface 
of his head, and a little to one side ; this curious canal is 
very much like a gas-pipe laid down in a city on one side 
of a street. But the question returns whether this gas-pipe 
is also a water-pipe ; in other words, whether the spout of 
the Sperm Whale is the mere vapour of the exhaled breath, 
or whether that exhaled breath is mixed with water taken 
in at the mouth, and discharged through the spiracle. It 
is certain that the mouth indirectly communicates with the 
spouting canal ; hut it cannot be proved that this is for the 
purpose of discharging Avater through the spiracle. Because 
the greatest necessity for so doing would seem to he, when 
in feeding he accidentally takes in water. But the Sperm 
Whale’s food is far beneath the surface, and there he cannot 
spout even if he would. Besides,' if you regard him very 
closely, and time him with your watch, you will find that 
when unmolested, there is an undeviating rhyme between 
the periods of his jets and the ordinary periods of respiration. 

But why pester one with all this reasoning on the subject ? 
Speak out! You have seen him spout; then declare what 
the spout is ; can you not tell water from air ? My dear sir, in 
this world it is not so easy to settle these plain things. I have 
ever found your plain things the knottiest of all. And as 
for this whale spout, you might almost stand in it, and yet 
be undecided as to what it is precisely. 

The central body of it is hidden in the snowy sparkling 
mist enveloping it ; and how can you certainly tell whether 
any water falls from it, when, always, when you are close 
enough to a whale to get a close view of his spout, he is in 
a prodigious commotion, the water cascading all around him. 
And if at such times you should think that you really 
perceived drops of moisture in the spout, how do you know 
that they are not merely condensed from its vapour ; or how 
do you know that they are not those identical drops super- 
ficially lodged in the spout-hole fissure, which is counter- 
sunk into the summit of the whale’s head ? For even when 
tranquilly swimming through the mid-day sea in a 
calm, with his elevated hump sun-dried as a dromedary’s 
in the desert ; even then, the whale always carries a small 
basin of water on his head, as under a blazing sun you will 
sometimes see a cavity in a rock filled up with rain. 

Nor is it at all prudent for the hunter to be over -curious 
touching the precise nature of the whale spout. It will 
not do for him to he peering into it, and putting his face in 


352 


MOBY DICK. 


!t. You cannot go with your pitcher to this fountain and 
fill it, and bring it away. For even when coming into 
slight contact with the outer, vapoury shreds of the jet, 
which will often happen, your skin will feverishly smart, 
from the acridness of the thing so touching it. And I 
know one, who coming into still closer contact with the 
spout, whether with some scientific object in view, or other- 
« wise, I cannot say, the skin peeled off from his cheek and 
arm. Wherefore, among whalemen, the spout is deemed 
poisonous ; they try to evade it. Another thing ; I have 
heard it said, and I do not much doubt it, that if the jet is 
fairly spouted into your eyes, it will blind you. The wisest 
thing the investigator can do then, it seems to me, is to let 
this deadly spout alone. 

Still, we can hypothesize, even if we cannot prove and 
establish. My hypothesis is this : that the spout is nothing 
but mist. And besides other reasons, to this conclusion I 
am impelled, by considerations touching the great inherent 
dignity and sublimity of the Sperm Whale ; I account him 
no common, shallow being, inasmuch as it is an undisputed 
fact that he is never found on soundings, or near shores ; 
all other whales sometimes are. He is both ponderous and 
profound. And I am convinced that from the heads of all 
ponderous profound beings, such as Plato, Pyrrho, the 
Devil, Jupiter, Dante, and so on, there always goes up a 
certain semi- visible steam, while in the act of thinking deep 
thoughts. While composing a little treatise on Eternity, I 
had the curiosity to place a mirror before me ; and ere long 
saw reflected there, a curious involved worming and un- 
dulation in the atmosphere over my head. The invariable 
moisture of my hair, while plunged in deep thought, after 
six cups of hot tea in my thin shingled attic, of an August 
noon ; this seems an additional argument for the above sup- 
position. 

And how nobly it raises our conceit of the mighty, misty 
, monster, to behold him solemnly sailing through a calm 
tropical sea ; his vast, mild head overhung by a canopy of 
vapour, engendered by his incommunicable contemplations, 
and that vapour — as you will sometimes see it — glorified by 
a rainbow, as if Heaven itself had put its seal upon his 
thoughts. For, d’ye see, rainbows do not visit the clear 
air ; they only irradiate vapour. And so, through all the 
thick mists of the dim doubts in my mind, divine intuitions 
now and then shoot, enkindling my fog with a heavenly 


MOB Y DICK. 


353 


ray. And for this I thank God ; for all have doubts ; many 
deny ; but doubts or denials, few along with them, have 
intuitions. Doubts of all things earthly, and intuitions of 
some things heavenly; this combination makes neither 
believer nor infidel, but makes a man who regards them 
both with equal eye. 


CHAPTER LXXXYI. 

THE TAIL. 

Other poets have warbled the praises of the soft eye of 
the antelope, and the lovely plumage of the bird that never 
alights ; less celestial, I celebrate a tail. 

Reckoning the largest sized Sperm Whale’s tail to begin 
at that point of the trunk where it tapers to about the girth 
of a man, it comprises upon its upper surface alone, an area 
of at least fifty square feet. The compact round body of 
its root expands into two broad, firm, flat palms or flukes, 
gradually shoaling away to less than an inch in thickness. 
At the crotch or junction, these flukes slightly overlap, then 
sideways recede from each other like wings, leaving a wide 
vacancy between. In no living thing are the lines of 
beauty more exquisitely defined than in the crescentic 
borders of these flukes. At its utmost expansion in the 
full grown whale, the tail will considerably exceed twenty 
feet across. 

The entire member seems a dense webbed bed of welded 
sinews ; but cut into it, and you find that three distinct 
strata compose it : — upper, middle, and lower. The fibres 
in the upper and lower layers, are long and horizontal ; 
those of the middle one, very short, and running crosswise 
between the outside layers. This triune structure, as much 
as anything else, imparts power to the tail. To the student 
of old Roman walls, the middle layer will furnish a curious 
parallel to the thin course of tiles always alternating with 
the stone in those wonderful relics of the antique, and 
which undoubtedly contribute so much to the great strength 
of the masonry. 

But as if this vast local power in the tendinous tail were 
not enough, the whole bulk of the leviathan is knit over 
with a warp and woof of muscular fibres and filaments, 

23 


354 


MOBY DICK. 


which passing on either side the loins and running down 
into the flukes, insensibly blend with them, and largely 
contribute to their might ; so that in the tail the confluent 
measureless force of the whole whale seems concentrated 
to a point. Could annihilation occur to matter, this were 
the thing to do it. 

Nor does this — its amazing strength, at all tend to cripple 
the graceful flexion of its motions ; where infantileness of 
ease undulates through a Titanism of power. On the con- 
trary, those motions derive their most appalling beauty 
from it. Real strength never impairs beauty or harmony, 
but it often bestows it ; and in everything imposingly beauti- 
ful, strength has much to do with the magic. Take away the 
tied tendons that all over seem bursting from the marble 
in the carved Hercules, and its charm would be gone. As 
devout Eckerman lifted the linen sheet from the naked 
corpse of Goethe, he was overwhelmed with the massive 
chest of the man, that seemed as a Roman triumphal arch. 
When Angelo paints even God the Father in human form, 
mark what robustness is there. And whatever they may 
reveal of the divine love in the Son, the soft, curled her- 
maphroditical Italian pictures, in which his idea has been 
most successfully embodied ; these pictures, so destitute as 
they are of all brawniness, hint nothing of any power, but 
the mere negative, feminine one of submission and endu- 
rance, which on all hands it is conceded, form the peculiar 
practical virtues of his teachings. 

Such is the subtle elasticity of the organ I treat of, that 
whether wielded in sport, or in earnest, or in anger, what- 
ever be the mood it be in, its flexions are invariably marked 
by exceeding grace. Therein no fairy’s arm can tran- 
scend it. 

Five great motions are peculiar to it. First, when used 
as a fin for progression ; Second, when used as a mace in 
battle; Third, in sweeping; Fourth, in lobtailing; Fifth in 
speaking flukes. 

First : Being horizontal in its position, the Leviathan’s 
tail acts in a different manner from the tails of all other sea 
creatures. It never wriggles. In man or fish, wriggling is 
a sign of inferiority. To the whale, his tail is the sole 
means of propulsion. Scroll- wise coiled forwards beneath 
the body, and then rapidly sprung backwards, it is this 
which gives that singular darting, leaping motion to the 


MOBY DICK. 


355 

monster when furiously swimming. His side-fins only serve 
to steer by. 

Second : It is a little significant, that while one sperm 
whale only fights another sperm whale with his head and 
jaw, nevertheless, in his conflicts with man, he chiefly and 
contemptuously uses his tail. In striking at a boat, he 
swiftly curves away his flukes from it, and the blow is only 
inflicted by the recoil. If it be made in the unobstructed 
air, especially if it descend to its mark, the stroke is then 
simply irresistible. ‘ No ribs of man or boat can withstand 
it. Your only salvation lies in eluding it ; but if it comes 
sideways through the opposing water, then partly owing to 
the light buoyancy of the whale boat, and the elasticity of 
its materials, a cracked rib or a dashed plank or two, a sort 
of stitch in the side, is generally the most serious result. 
These submerged side blows are so often received in the 
fishery, that they are accounted mere child’s play. Some 
one strips off a frock, and the hole is stopped. 

Third : I cannot demonstrate it, but it seems to me, that 
in the whale the sense of touch is concentrated in the tail ; 
for in this respect there is a delicacy in it only equalled by 
the daintiness of the elephant’s trunk. This delicacy is 
chiefly evinced in the action of sweeping, when in maidenly 
gentleness the whale with a certain soft slowness moves 
his immense flukes from side to side upon the surface of the 
sea ; and if he feel but a sailor’s whisker, woe to that sailor, 
whiskers and all. What tenderness there is in that 
preliminary touch ! Had this tail any prehensile power, I 
should straightway bethink me of Harmonodes’ elephant 
that so frequented the flower-market, and with low saluta- 
tions presented nosegays to damsels, and then caressed 
their zones. On more accounts than one, a pity it is that 
the whale does not possess this prehensile virtue in his tail ; 
for I have heard of yet another elephant, that when wound- 
ed in the fight, curved round his trunk and extracted the 
dart. 

Fourth : Stealing unawares upon the whale in the fancied 
security of the middle of solitary seas, you find him unbent 
from the vast corpulence of his dignity, and kitten-like, he 
plays on the ocean as if it were a hearth. But still you see his 
power in his play. The broad palms of his tail are flirted 
high into the air ; then smiting the surface, the thunderous 
concussion resounds for miles. You would almost think a 
great gun had been discharged ; and if you noticed the light 


350 


MOBY DICK. 


wreath of vapour from the spiracle at his other extremity, 
you would think that that was the smoke from the touch- 
hole. 

Fifth : As in the ordinary floating posture of the leviathan 
the flukes lie considerably below the level of his back, they 
are then completely out of sight beneath the surface ; but 
when he is about to plunge into the deeps, his entire flukes 
with at least thirty feet of his body are tossed erect in the 
air, and so remain vibrating a moment, till they downwards 
shoot out of view. Excepting the sublime breach — some- 
where else to be described— this peaking of the whale’s flukes 
is perhaps the grandest sight to be seen in all animated 
nature. Out of the bottomless profundities the gigantic 
tail seems spasmodically snatching at the highest heaven. 
So in dreams, have I seen majestic Satan thrusting forth his 
tormented colossal claw from the flame Baltic of Hell. But 
in gazing at such scenes, it is all in all what mood you are 
in ; if in the Dantean, the devils will occur to you ; if in that 
of Isaiah, the archangels. Standing at the mast-head of my 
ship during a sunrise that crimsoned sky and sea, I once 
saw a large herd of whales in the east, all heading towards 
the sun, and for a moment vibrating in concert with peaked 
flukes. As it seemed to me at the time, such a grand em- 
bodiment of adoration of the gods was never beheld, even in 
Persia, the home of the fire worshippers. As Ptolemy Philo- 
pater testified of the African elephant, I then testified of the 
whale, pronouncing him the most devout of all beings. For 
according to King Juba, the military elephants of antiquity 
often hailed the morning with their trunks uplifted in the 
profoundest silence. 

The chance comparison in this chapter, between the 
whale and the elephant, so far as some aspects of the tail 
of the one and the trunk of the other are concerned, should 
not tend to place those two opposite organs on an equality, 
much less the creatures to which they respectively belong. 
For as the mightiest elephant is but a terrier to Leviathan, 
so, compared with Leviathan’s tail, his trunk is but the 
stalk of a lily. The most direful blow from the elephant’s 
trunk were as the playful tap of a fan, compared with the 
measureless crush and crash of the sperm whale’s ponder- 
ous flukes, which in repeated instances have one after the 
other hurled entire boats with all their oars and crews into 
the air, very much as an Indian juggler tosses his balls* 

* Though all comparison in the way of general bulk between the 


MOBY DICK. 


357 


The more I consider this mighty tail, the more do I de- 
plore my inability to express it. At times there are gestures 
in it, which, though they would well grace the hand of man, 
remain wholly inexplicable. In an extensive herd, so re- 
markable, occasionally, are these mystic gestures, that I 
have heard hunters who have declared them akin to Free- 
Mason signs and symbols ; that the whale, indeed, by these 
methods intelligently conversed with the world. Nor are 
there wanting other motions of the whale in his general 
body, full of strangeness, and unaccountable to his most ex- 
perienced assailant. Dissect him how I may, then, I but go 
skin deep ; I know him not, and never will. But if I know 
not even the tail of this whale, how understand his head ? 
much more, how comprehend his face, when face he has 
none? Thou shalt see my back parts, my tail, he seems to 
say, but my face shall not be seen. But I cannot completely 
make out his back parts ; and hint what he will about his 
face, I say again he has no face. 


CHAPTER LXXXVII. 

THE GRAND ARMADA. 

The long and narrow peninsula of Malacca, extending 
south-eastward from the territories of Birmah, forms the 
most southerly point of all Asia. In a continuous line from 
that peninsula stretch the long islands of Sumatra, Java, 
Bally, and Timor ; which, with many others, form a vast 
mole, or rampart, lengthwise connecting Asia with Australia, 
and dividing the long unbroken Indian ocean from the 
thickly studded oriental archipelagoes. This rampart is 
pierced by several sally-ports for the convenience of ships 
and whales conspicuous among which are the straits of 
Sunda and Malacca. By the straits of Sunda, chiefly, ves- 
sels bound to China from the west, emerge into the China 
seas. 

whale and the elephant is preposterous, inasmuch as in that particular 
the elephant stands in much the same respect to the whale that a dog 
does to the elephant; nevertheless, there are not wanting some points 
of curious similitude; among these is the spout. It is well known that 
the elephant will often draw up water or dust in his trunk, and then 
elevating it, jet it forth in a stream. 


358 


MOBY DICK. 


Those narrow straits of Sunda divide Sumatra from Java ; 
and standing midway in that vast rampart of islands, but- 
tressed by that bold green promontory, known to seamen 
as Java Head ; they not a little correspond to the central 
gateway opening into some vast walled empire ; and con- 
sidering the inexhaustible wealth of spices, and silks, and 
jewels, and gold, and ivory, with which the thousand islands 
of that oriental sea are enriched, it seems a significant pro- 
vision of nature, that such treasures, by the very formation 
of the land, should at least bear the appearance, however 
ineffectual, of being guarded from the all-grasping western 
world. The shores of the Straits of Sunda are unsupplied 
with those domineering fortresses which guard the entrances 
to the Mediterranean, the Baltic, and the Propontis. Un- 
like the Danes, these Orientals do not demand the obsequi- 
ous homage of lowered top-sails from the endless procession 
of ships before the wind, which for centuries past, by night 
and by day, have passed between the islands of Sumatra and 
Java, freighted with the costliest cargoes of the east. But 
while they freely waive a ceremonial like this, they do by 
no means renounce their claim to more solid tribute. 

Time out of mind the piratical proas of the Malays, lurk- 
ing among the low shaded coves and islets of Sumatra, 
have sallied out upon the vessels sailing through the 
straits, fiercely demanding tribute at the point of their spears. 
Though by the repeated bloody chastisements they have re- 
cived at the hands of European cruisers, the audacity of 
these corsairs has of late been somewhat repressed ; yet, 
even at the present day, we occasionally hear of English 
and American vessels, which, in those waters, have been 
remorselessly boarded and pillaged. 

With a fair, fresh wind, the Pequod was now drawing 
nigh to these straits; Ahab purposing to pass through 
them into the Javan sea, and thence, cruising northwards, 
over waters known to be frequented here and there by the 
Sperm Whale, sweep inshore by the Philippine Islands, 
and gain the far coast of Japan, in time for the great whal- 
ing season there. By these means, the circumnavigating 
Pequod would sweep almost all the known Sperm Whale 
cruising grounds of the world, previous to descending upon 
the Line in the Pacific ; where Ahab, though everywhere 
else foiled in his pursuit, firmly counted upon giving battle 
to Moby Dick, in the sea he was most known to frequent ; 


MOB Y DICK. 359 

and at a season when lie might most reasonably be pre- 
sumed to be haunting it. 

But how now ? in this zoned quest, does Ahab touch no 
land ? does his crew drink air ? Surely, he will stop for 
water. Nay. For a long time, now, the circus-running 
sun has raced within his fiery ring, and needs no sustenance 
but what’s in himself. So Ahab. Mark this, too, in the 
whaler. While other hulls are loaded down with alien 
stuff, to be transferred to foreign wharves ; the world- wan- 
dering whale-ship carries no cargo but herself and crew, their 
weapons and their wants. She has a whole lake’s contents 
bottled in her ample hold. She is ballasted with utilities ; 
not altogether with unusable pig-lead and kentledge. She 
carries years’ water in her. Clear old prime Nantucket 
water ; which, when three years afloat, the Nantucketer, in 
the Pacific, prefers to drink before the brackish fluid, but 
yesterday rafted off in casks, from the Peruvian or Indian 
streams. Hence it is, that, while other ships may have gone 
to China from New York, and back again, touching at a 
score of ports, the whale-ship, in all that interval, may not 
have sighted one grain of soil ; her crew having seen no man 
but floating seamen like themselves. So that did you carry 
them the news that another flood had come, they would 
only answer — “ Well, boys, here’s the ark ! ” 

Now, as many Sperm Whales had been captured on the 
western coast of Java, in the near vicinity of the Straits of 
Sunda ; indeed, as most of the ground, roundabout, was gener- 
ally recognised by the fishermen as an excellent spot for cruis- 
ing ; therefore, as the Pequod gained more and more upon 
Java Head, the look-outs were repeatedly hailed, and admon- 
ished to keep wide awake. But though the green palmy cliffs 
of the land soon loomed on the starboard bow, and with de- 
lighted nostrils the fresh cinnamon was snuffed in the air, 
yet not a single jet was descried. Almost renouncing all 
thought of falling in with any game hereabouts, the ship had 
well-nigh entered the straits, when the customary cheer- 
ing cry was heard from aloft, and ere long a spectacle of 
singular magnificence saluted us. 

But here be it premised, that owing to the unwearied 
activity Avith which of late they have been hunted over all 
four oceans, the Sperm Whales, instead of almost invaria- 
bly sailing in small detached companies, as in former times, 
are iioav frequently met Avith in extensive herds, sometimes 
embracing so great a multitude, that it Avould almost seem 


360 


MOBY DICK. 


as if numerous nations of them had sworn solemn league 
and covenant for mutual assistance and protection. To 
this aggregation of the Sperm Whale into such immense 
caravans, may be imputed the circumstance that even in 
the best cruising grounds, you may now sometimes sail for 
weeks and months together, without being greeted by a 
single spout ; and then be suddenly saluted by what some- 
times seems thousands on thousands. 

Broad on both bow's, at the distance of some two or three 
miles, and forming a great semicircle, embracing one half 
of the level horizon, a continuous chain of whale-jets were 
up-playing and sparkling in the noon-day air. Unlike the 
straight perpendicular twin-jets of the Right Whale, which, 
dividing at top, fall over in two branches, like the cleft 
drooping boughs of a willow, the single forward- slanting 
spout of the Sperm Whale presents a thick curled bush of 
white mist, continually rising and falling away to leeward. 

Seen from the Pequod’s deck, then, as she would rise on 
a high hill of the sea, this host of vapoury spouts, individu- 
ally curling up into the air, and beheld through a blending 
atmosphere of bluish haze, showed like the thousand cheer- 
ful chimneys of some dense metropolis, descried of a balmy 
autumnal morning, by some horseman on a height. 

As marching armies approaching an unfriendly defile in 
the mountains, accelerate their march, all eagerness to 
place that perilous passage in their rear, and once more ex- 
pand in comparative security upon the plain ; even so did 
this vast fleet of whales now seem hurrying forward through 
the straits ; gradually contracting the wings of their semi- 
circle, and swimming on, in one solid, but still crescentic 
centre. 

Crowding all sail the Pequod pressed after them; the 
harpooners handling their weapons, and loudly cheering 
from the heads of their yet suspended boats. If the wind 
only held, little doubt had they, that chased through these 
Straits of Sunda, the vast host would only deploy into the 
Oriental seas to witness the capture of not a few of their 
number. And who could tell whether, in that congregated 
caravan, Moby Dick himself might not temporarily be 
swimming, like the worshipped white-elephant in the cor- 
onation procession of the Siamese ! So with s tun-sail piled 
on stun-sail, we sailed along, driving these leviathans 
before us ; when, of a sudden, the voice of Tashtego was 
heard, loudly directing attention to something in our wake. 


MOBY DICK. 


361 


Corresponding to the crescent in our van, we beheld an- 
other in our rear. It seemed formed of detached white 
vapours, rising and falling something like the spouts of the 
whales ; only they did not so completely come and go ; for 
they constantly hovered, without finally disappearing. 
Levelling his glass at this sight, Ahab quickly revolved in 
his pivot-hole, crying, “Aloft there, and rig whips and 
buckets to wet the sails ; — Malays, sir, and after us ! ” 

As if too long lurking behind the headlands, till the 
Pequod should fairly have entered the straits, these rascally 
Asiatics were now in hot pursuit, to make up for their over- 
cautious delay. But when the swift Pequod, with a fresh 
leading wind, was herself in hot chase ; how very kind of 
these tawny philanthropists to assist in speeding her on to 
her own chosen pursuit, — mere riding- whips and rowels to 
her, that they were. As with glass under arm, Ahab to- 
and-fro paced the deck ; in his forward turn beholding the 
monsters he chased, and in the after one the bloodthirsty 
pirates chasing him ; some such fancy as the above seemed 
his. And when he glanced upon the green w^alls of the 
watery defile in which the ship was then sailing, and be- 
thought him that through that gate lay the route to his 
vengeance, and beheld, how that through that same gate 
he was now both chasing and being chased to his deadly 
end; and not only that, but a herd of remorseless wild 
pirates and inhuman atheistical devils were infernally 
cheering them on with their curses ; — when all these con- 
ceits had passed through his brain, Ahab’s brow was left 
gaunt and ribbed, like the black sand beach after some 
stormy tide has been gnawing it, without being able to drag 
the firm thing from its place. 

But thoughts like these troubled very few of the reckless 
crew ; and when, after steadily dropping and dropping the 
pirates astern, the Pequod at last shot by the vivid green 
Cockatoo Point on the Sumatra side, emerging at last upon 
the broad waters beyond; then, the harpooners seemed 
more to grieve that the swift wdiales had been gaining upon 
the ship, than to rejoice that the ship had so victoriously 
gained upon the Malays. But still driving on in the wake 
of the whales, at length they seemed abating their speed ; 
gradually the ship neared them ; and the wind now dying 
away, word was passed to spring to the boats. But no sooner 
did the herd, by some presumed wonderful instinct of the 
Sperm Whale, become notified of the three keels that were 


362 


MOBY DICK. 


after them, — though as yet a mile in their rear, — than they 
rallied again, and forming in close ranks and battalions, so 
that their spouts all looked like flashing lines of stacked 
bayonets, moved on with redoubled velocity. 

Stripped to our shirts and drawers, we sprang to the 
white-ash, and after several hours’ pulling were almost dis- 
posed to renounce the chase, when a general pausing com- 
motion among the whales gave animating token that they 
were now at last under the influence of that strange per- 
plexity of inert irresolution, which, when the fishermen 
perceive it in the whale, they say he is gallied. The com- 
pact martial columns in which they had been hitherto rapidly 
and steadily swimming, were now broken up in one measure- 
less rout ; and like King Porus’ elephants in the Indian 
battle with Alexander, they seemed going mad with con- 
sternation. In all directions expanding in vast irregular 
circles, and aimlessly swimming hither and thither, by their 
short thick spoutings, they plainly betrayed their distrac- 
tion of panic. This was still more strangely evinced by those 
of their number, who, completely paralysed as it were, help- 
lessly floated like water-logged dismantled ships on the sea. 
Had these leviathans been but a flock of simple sheep, 
pursued over the pasture by three fierce wolves, they could 
not possibly have evinced such excessive dismay. But this 
occasional timidity is characteristic of almost all herding 
creatures. Though banding together in tens of thousands, 
the lion-maned buffaloes of the West have fled before a sol- 
itary horseman. Witness, too, all human beings, how when 
herded together in the sheepfold of a theatre’s pit, they will, 
at the slightest alarm of fire, rush helter-skelter for the 
outlets, crowding, trampling, jamming, and remorselessly 
dashing each other to death. Best, therefore, withhold any 
amazement at the strangely gallied whales before us, for 
there is no folly of the beasts of the earth which is not 
infinitely outdone by the madness of men. 

Though many of the whales, as has been said, were in 
violent motion, yet it is to be observed that as a whole the 
herd neither advanced nor retreated, but collectively re- 
mained in one place. As is customary in those cases, the 
boats at once separated, each making for some one lone 
whale on the outskirts of the shoal. In about three minutes’ 
time, Queequeg’s harpoon was flung ; the stricken fish darted 
blinding spray in our faces, and then running away with 
us like light, steered straight for the heart of the herd. 


MOBY DICK. 


363 


Though such a movement on the part of the whale struck 
under such circumstances, is in nowise unprecedented ; 
and indeed is almost always more or less anticipated ; yet 
does it present one of the more perilous vicissitudes of the 
fishery. For as the swift monster drags you deeper and 
deeper into the frantic shoal, you hid adieu to circumspect 
life and only exist in a delirious throb. 

As, blind and deaf, the whale plunged forward, as if by 
sheer power of speed to rid himself of the iron leech that 
had fastened to him ; as we thus tore a white gash in the 
sea, on all sides menaced as we flew, by the crazed creatures 
to and fro rushing about us ; our beset boat was like a 
ship mobbed by ice-isles in a tempest, and striving to steer 
through their complicated channels and straits, knowing 
not at what moment it may be locked in and crushed. 

But not a bit daunted, Queequeg steered us manfully ; 
now sheering off from this monster directly across our 
route in advance ; now edging away from that, whose 
colossal flukes were suspended overhead, while all the time, 
Starbuck stood up in the bows, lance in hand pricking out 
of our way whatever whales he could reach by short darts, 
for there was no time to make long ones. Nor were the oars- 
men quite idle, though their wonted duty was now altogether 
dispensed with. They chiefly attended to the shouting part 
of the business. “ Out of the way, Commodore ! ” cried 
one, to a great dromedary that of a sudden rose bodily to 
the surface, and for an instant threatened to swamp us. 
“ Hard down with your tail, there ! ” cried a second to 
another, which, close to our gunwale, seemed calmly cool- 
ing himself with his own fan-like extremity. 

All whaleboats carry certain curious contrivances, origin- 
ally invented by the Nantucket Indians, called druggs. 
Two thick squares of wood of equal size are stoutly clenched 
together, so that they cross each other’s grain at right 
angles ; a line of considerable length is then attached to the 
middle of this block and the other end of the line being 
looped, it can in a moment be fastened to a harpoon. It is 
chiefly among gallied whales that this drugg is used. For 
then, more whales are close round you than you can possi- 
bly chase at one time. But sperm whales are not every 
day encountered ; while you may, then, you must kill all 
you can. And if you cannot kill them all at once, you must 
wing them, so that they can be afterwards killed at your 
leisure. Hence it is, that at times like these the drugg 


364 


MOBY DICK. 


comes into requisition. Our boat was furnished with three 
of them. The first and second were successfully darted, 
and we saw the whales staggeringly running off, fettered 
by the enormous sidelong resistance of the towing drugg. 
They were cramped like malefactors with the chain and 
ball. But upon flinging the third, in the act of tossing 
overboard the clumsy wooden block, it caught under one 
of the seats of the boat, and in an distant tore it out and 
carried it away, dropping the oarsman in the boat’s bottom 
as the seat slid from under him. On both sides the sea 
came in at the wounded planks, but we stuffed two or three 
drawers and shirts in, and so stopped the leaks for the 
time. 

It had been next to impossible to dart these drugged-har- 
poons, were it not that as we advanced into the herd, our 
whale’s way greatly diminished; moreover, that as we 
went still further and further from the circumference of 
commotion, the direful disorders seemed waning. So that 
when at last the jerking harpoon drew out, and the towing 
whale sideways vanished ; then, with the tapering force of 
his parting momentum, we glided between two whales into 
the innermost heart of the shoal, as if from some mountain 
torrent we had slid into a serene valley lake. Here the 
storms in the roaring glens between the outermost whales, 
were heard but not felt. In this central expanse the sea 
presented that smooth satin-like surface, called a sleek, 
produced by the subtle moisture thrown off by the whale in 
his more quiet moods. Yes, we were now in that enchant- 
ed calm which they say lurks at the heart of every com- 
motion. And still in the distracted distance we beheld the 
tumults of the outer concentric circles, and saw successive 
pods of whales, eight or ten in each, swiftly going round 
and round, like multiplied spans of horses in a ring ; and 
so closely shoulder to shoulder, that a Titanic circus-rider 
might easily have overarched the middle ones, and so have 
gone round on their backs. Owing to the density of the 
crowd of reposing whales, more immediately surrounding 
the embayed axis of the herd, no possible chance of escape 
was at present afforded us. We must watch for a breach 
in the living wall that hemmed us in ; the wall that had 
only admitted us in order to shut us up. Keeping at the 
centre of the lake, we were occasionally visited by small 
tame cows and calves; the women and children of this 
routed host. 


MOBY DICK. 


365 


Now, inclusive of the occasional wide intervals between 
the revolving outer circles, and inclusive of the spaces be- 
tween the various pods in any one of those circles, the 
entire area at this juncture, embraced by the whole multi- 
tude, must have contained at least two or three square 
miles. . At any rate — though indeed such a test at such a 
time might be deceptive — spoutings might be discovered 
from our low boat that seemed playing up almost from the 
rim of the horizon. I mention this circumstance, because, 
as if the cows and calves had been purposely locked up in 
this innermost fold ; and as if the wide extent of the herd 
had hitherto prevented them from learning the precise 
cause of its stopping ; or, possibly, being so young, unso- 
phisticated, and every way innocent and inexperienced; 
however it may have been, these smaller whales — now and 
then visiting our becalmed boat from the margin of the 
lake — evinced a wondrous fearlessness and confidence, or 
else a still becharmed panic which it was impossible not to 
marvel at. Like household dogs they came snuffling round 
us, right up to our gunwales, and touching them ; till it al- 
most seemed that some spell had suddenly domesticated 
them. Queequeg patted their foreheads ; Starbuck scratch- 
ed their backs with his lance ; but fearful of the conse- 
quences, for the time refrained from darting it. 

But far beneath this wondrous world upon the surface, 
another and still stranger world met our eyes as we gazed 
over the side. For, suspended in those watery vaults, 
floated the forms of the nursing mothers of the whales, and 
those that by their enormous girth seemed shortly to be- 
come mothers. The lake, as I have hinted, was to a con- 
siderable depth exceedingly transparent ; and as human 
infants while suckling will calmly and fixedly gaze away 
from the breast, as if leading two different lives at the 
time ; and while yet drawing mortal nourishment, be still 
spiritually feasting upon some unearthly reminiscence ; — 
even so did the young of these whales seem looking up 
towards us, but not at us, as if we were but a bit of Gulf- 
weed in their new-born sight. Floating on their sides, the 
mothers also seemed quietly eyeing us. One of these little 
infants, that from certain queer tokens seemed hardly a 
day old, might have measured some fourteen feet in length, 
and some six feet in girth. He was a little frisky ; though 
as yet his body seemed scarce yet recovered from that irk- 
some position it had so lately occupied in the maternal 


366 


MOBY LICK. 


reticule ; where, tail to head, and all ready for the final 
spring, the unborn whale lies bent like a Tartar’s bow. The 
delicate side-fins, and the palms of his flukes, still freshly 
retained the plaited crumpled appearance of a baby’s ears 
newly arrived from foreign parts. 

“ Line ! line ! ” cried Queequeg, looking over the gun- 
wale ; “ him fast ! him fast ! — Who line him ? Who struck? 
— Two whale ; one big, one little ! ” 

“ What ails ye, man ? ” cried Starbuck. 

“ Look-e here,” said Queequeg pointing down. 

As when the stricken whale, that from the tub has reeled 
out hundreds of fathoms of rope ; as, after deep sounding, 
he floats up again, and shows the slackened curling line 
buoyantly rising and spiralling towards the air ; so now, 
Starbuck saw long coils of the umbilical cord of Madame 
Leviathan, by which the young cub seemed still tethered 
to its dam. Not seldom in the rapid vicissitudes of the 
chase, this natural line, with the maternal end loose, be- 
comes entangled with the hempen one, so that the cub is 
thereby trapped. Some of the subtlest secrets of the seas 
seemed divulged to us in this enchanted pond. We saw 
young Leviathan amours in the deep.* 

And thus, though surrounded by circle upon circle of 
consternations and affrights, did these inscrutable creatures 
at the centre freely and fearlessly indulge in all peaceful 
concernments ; yea serenely revelled in dalliance and de- 
light. But even so, amid the tornadoed Atlantic of my 
being, do I myself still for ever centrally disport in mute 
calm ; and while ponderous planets of unwaning woe re- 
volve round me, deep down and deep inland there I still 
bathe me in eternal mildness of joy. 

Meanwhile, as we thus lay entranced, the occasional sud- 
den frantic spectacles in the distance evinced the activity 

* The sperm whale, as with all other species of the Leviathan, but 
unlike most other fish, breeds indifferently at all seasons ; after a gesta- 
tion which may probably be set down at nine months, producing but 
one at a time ; though in some few known instances giving birth to an 
Esau and Jacob: — a contingency provided for in suckling by two teats, 
curiously situated, one on each side of the amus ; but the breasts them- 
selves extend upwards from that. When by chance these precious 
parts in a nursing whale are cut by the hunter’s lance, the mother’s 
pouring milk and blood rivallingly discolour the sea for rods. The 
milk is very sweet and rich; it has been tasted by man; it might do 
well with strawberries. When overflowing with mutual esteem, the 
whales salute more hominunu 


MOBY DICK. 


367 


of the other boats, still engaged in drugging the whales on 
the frontier of the host ; or possibly carrying on the war 
within the first circle, where abundance of room and some 
convenient retreats were afforded them. But the sight of 
the enraged drugged whales now and then blindly darting 
to and fro across the circles, was nothing to what at last 
met our eyes. It is sometimes the custom when fast to a 
whale more than commonly powerful and alert, to seek to 
hamstring him, as it were, by sundering or maiming his 
gigantic tail-tendon. It is done by darting a short-handled 
cutting-spade, to which is attached a rope for hauling it 
back again. A whale wounded (as we afterwards learned) 
in this part, but not effectually, as it seemed, had broken 
away from the boat, carrying along with him half of the 
harpoon line ; and in the extraordinary agony of the wound, 
he was now dashing among the revolving circles like the 
lone mounted desperado Arnold, at the battle of Saratoga, 
carrying dismay wherever he went. 

But agonising as was the wound of this whale, and an 
appalling spectacle enough, any way ; yet the peculiar hor- 
ror with which he seemed to inspire the rest of the herd, 
was owing to a cause which at first the intervening dis- 
tance obscured from us. But at length we perceived that 
by one of the unimaginable accidents of the fishery, this 
whale had become entangled in the harpoon-line that he 
towed ; he had also run away with the cutting-spade in 
him ; and while the free end of the rope attached to that 
weapon, had permanently caught in the coils of the har- 
poon-line round his tail, the cutting-spade itself had worked 
loose from his flesh. So that tormented to madness, he 
was now churning through the water, violently flailing 
with his flexible tail, and tossing the keen spade about him, 
wounding and murdering his own comrades. 

This terrific object seemed to recall the whole herd from 
their stationary fright. First, the whales forming the 
margin of our lake began to crowd a little, and tumble 
against each other, as if lifted by half-spent billows from 
afar ;• then the lake itself began faintly to heave and swell ; 
the submarine bridal-chambers and nurseries vanished ; in 
more and more contracting orbits the whales in the more 
central circles began to swim in thickening clusters. Yes, 
the long calm was departing. A low advancing hum was 
soon heard ; and then like to the tumultuous masses of 
block-ice when the great river Hudson breaks up in Spring, 


368 


MOBY DICK. 


the entire host of whales came tumbling upon their inner 
centre, as if to pile themselves up in one common moun- 
tain. Instantly Starbuck and Queequeg changed places ; 
Starbuck taking the stern. 

“ Oars ! Oars ! ” he intensely whispered, seizing the helm 
— “ gripe your oars, and clutch your souls, now ! My God, 
men, stand by ! Shove him off, you Queequeg — the whale 
there ! — prick him ! — hit him ! Stand up — stand up, and 
stay so ! Spring, men — pull, men ; never mind their backs 
— scrape them ! — scrape away ! ” 

The boat was now all but jammed between two vast black 
bulks, leaving a narrow Dardanelles between their long 
lengths. But by desperate endeavour we at last shot into a 
temporary opening ; then giving way rapidly, and at the 
same time earnestly watching for another outlet. After 
many similar hair-breadth escapes, we at last s wiftly glided 
into what had just been one of the outer circles, but now 
crossed by random whales, all violently making for one 
centre. This lucky salvation was cheaply purchased by the 
loss of Queequeg 1 s hat, who, while standing in the bows to 
prick the fugitive whales, had his hat taken clean from 
his head by the air-eddy made by the sudden tossing of a 
pair of broad flukes close by. 

Riotous and disordered as the universal commotion now 
was, it soon resolved itself into what seemed a systematic 
movement ; for having clumped together at last in one dense 
body, they then renewed their onward flight with aug- 
mented fleetness. Further pursuit was useless ; but the 
boats still lingered in their wake to pick up what drugged 
whales might be dropped astern, and likewise to secure one 
which Flash had killed and waited. The waif is a pennoned 
pole, tv^o or three of which are carried by every boat ; and 
which, when additional game is at hand, are inserted up- 
right into the floating body of a dead whale, both to mark 
its place on the sea, and also as token of prior possession, 
should the boats of any other ship draw near. 

The result of this lowering was somewhat illustrative of 
that sagacious saying in the Fishery, — the more whales the 
less fish. Of all the drugged whales only one was captured. 
The rest contrived to escape for the time, but only to be 
taken, as will hereafter be seen, by some other craft than 
the Pequod. 


MOBY DICK. 


369 


CHAPTER LXXXYIII. 

SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS. 

The previous chapter gave account of an immense body or 
herd of Sperm Whales, and there was also then given the 
probable cause inducing those vast aggregations. 

Now, though such great bodies are at times encountered, 
yet, as must have been seen, even at the present day, small 
detached bands are occasionally observed, embracing from 
twenty to fifty individuals each. Such bands are known as 
schools. They generally are of two sorts ; those composed 
almost entirely of females, and those mustering none but 
young vigorous males, or bulls, as they are familiarly 
designated. 

In cavalier attendance upon the school of females, you 
invariably see a male of full grown magnitude, but not old ; 
who, upon any alarm, evinces his gallantry by falling in the 
rear and covering the flight of his ladies. In truth, this 
gentleman is a luxurious Ottoman, swimming about over the 
watery world, surroundingly accompanied by all the solaces 
and endearments of the harem. The contrast between this 
Ottoman and his concubines is striking ; because, wdiile he 
is always of the largest leviathanic proportions, the ladies, 
even at full growth, are not more than one-third of the bulk 
of an average-sized male. They are comparatively delicate, 
indeed ; I dare say, not to exceed half a dozen yards around 
the waist. Nevertheless, it cannot be denied, that upon the 
whole they are hereditarily entitled to embonpoint. 

It is a very curious to watch this harem and its lord in 
their indolent ramblings. Like fashionables, they are for ever 
on the move in leisurely search of variety. You meet them 
on the Line in time for the full flower of the Equatorial 
feeding season, having just returned, perhaps, from spend- 
ing the summer in the Northern seas, and so cheating sum- 
mer of all unpleasant weariness and warmth. By the time 
they have lounged up and down the promenade of the Equa- 
tor awhile, they start for the Oriental waters in anticipation 

24 


370 


MOBY DICK. 


of the cool season there, and so evade the other excessive 
temperature of the year. 

When serenely advancing on one of these journeys, if any 
strange suspicious sights are seen, my lord whale keeps a 
wary eye on his interesting family. Should any unwarrant- 
ably pert young Leviathan coming that way, presume to 
draw confidentially close to one of the ladies, with what 
prodigious fury the Bashaw assails him, and chases him 
away ! High times, indeed, if unprincipled young rakes like 
him are to be permitted to invade the sanctity of domestic 
bliss ; though do what the Bashaw will, he cannot keep the 
most notorious Lothario out of his bed ; for, alas ! all fish 
bed in common. As ashore, the ladies often cause the most 
terrible duels among their rival admirers ; just so with the 
whales, who sometimes come to deadly battle, and all for 
love. They fence with their long lower jaws, sometimes 
locking them together, and so striving for the supremacy 
like elks that warringly interweave their antlers. Not a few 
are captured having the deep scars of these encounters, — 
furrowed heads, broken teeth, scolloped fins ; and in some 
instances, wrenched and dislocated mouths. 

But supposing the invader of domestic bliss to betake 
himself away at the first rush of the harem’s lord, then is it 
very diverting to watch that lord. Gently he insinuates 
his vast bulk among them again and revels there awhile, 
still in tantalising vicinity to young Lothario, like pious 
Solomon devoutly worshipping among his thousand concu- 
bines. Granting other whales to be hi sight, the fishermen 
will seldom give chase to one of these Grand Turks ; for 
these Grand Turks are too lavish of their strength, and 
hence their unctuousness is small. As for the sons and the 
daughters they beget, why, those sons and daughters must 
take care of themselves ; at least, with only the maternal 
help. For like certain other omnivorous roving lovers that 
might be named, my Lord Whale has no taste for the nurs- 
ery, however much for the bower; and so being a great 
traveller, he leaves his anonymous babies all over the world ; 
every baby an exotic. In good time, nevertheless,, as the 
ardour of youth declines ; as years and dumps increase ; as 
reflection lends her solemn pauses ; in short, as a general 
lassitude overtakes the sated Turk ; then a love of ease and 
virtue supplants the love for maidens ; our Ottoman enters 
upon the impotent, repentant, admonitory stage of life, for- 
swears, disbands the harem, and grown" to an exemplary, 


MOBY DICK. 


371 


sulky old soul, goes about all alone among the meridians 
and parallels saying his prayers, and warning each young 
Leviathan from his amorous errors. 

Now, as the harem of whales is called by the fishermen a 
school, so is the lord and master of that school technically 
known as the schoolmaster. It is therefore not in strict 
character, however admirably satirical, that after going to 
school himself, he should then go abroad inculcating not 
what he learned there, but the folly of it. Ilis title, school- 
master, would very naturally seem derived from the name 
bestowed upon the harem itself, but some have surmised 
that the man who first thus entitled this sort of Ottoman 
whale, must have read the memoirs of Vidocq, and informed 
himself what sort of a country-schoolmaster that famous 
Frenchman was in his younger days, and what was the 
nature of those occult lessons he inculcated into some 
of his pupils. 

The same secludedness and isolation to which the school- 
master whale betakes himself in his advancing years, is 
true of all aged Sperm Whales. Almost universally, a 
lone whale — as a solitary Leviathan is cafied — proves an 
ancient one. Like venerable moss-bearded Daniel Boone, 
he will have no one near him but Nature herself; and her 
he takes to wife in the wilderness of waters, and the best of 
wives she is, though she keeps so many moody secrets. 

The schools composing none but young and vigorous 
males, previously mentioned, offer a strong contrast to the 
harem schools. For while those female whales are char- 
acteristically timid, the young males, or forty-barrel-bulls, 
as they call them, are by far the most pugnacious of all 
Leviathans, and proverbially the most dangerous to en- 
counter ; excepting * those wondrous grey-headed, grizzled 
whales, sometimes met, and these will fight you like grim 
fiends exasperated by a penal gout. 

The Forty-barrel-bull schools are larger than the harem 
schools. Like a mob of young collegians, they are full of 
fight, fun, and wickedness, tumbling round the world at 
such a reckless, rollicking rate, that no prudent underwriter 
would insure them any more than he would a riotous lad 
at Yale or Harvard. They soon relinquish this turbulence 
though, and when about three-fourths grown, break up, and 
separately go about in quest of settlements, that is, harems. 

Another point of difference between the male and female 
schools is still more characteristic of the sexes. Say you 


872 


MOBY DICK. 


strike a Forty-barrel-bull poor devil! all his comrades quit 
him. But strike a member of the harem school, and her 
companions swim around her with every token of concern, 
sometimes lingering so near her and so long, as themselves 
to fall a prey. 


CHAPTER LXXXIX. 

FAST-FISH AND LOOSE-FISH. 

The allusion to the waif and waif-poles in the last chapter 
but one, necessitates some account of the laws and regula- 
tions of the whale fishery, of which the waif may be deemed 
the grand symbol and badge. 

It frequently happens that when several ships are cruis- 
ing in company, a whale may be struck by one vessel, then 
escape, and be finally killed and captured by another 
vessel ; and herein are indirectly comprised many minor 
contingencies, all partaking of this one grand feature. For 
example, — after a weary and perilous chase and capture of 
a whale, the body may get loose from the ship by reason of 
a violent storm ; and drifting far away to leeward, be re- 
taken by a second whaler, who, in a calm, snugly tows it 
alongside, without risk of life or line. Thus the most vexa- 
tious and violent disputes would often arise between the 
fishermen, were there not some written or unwritten, uni- 
versal, undisputed law applicable to all cases. 

Perhaps the only formal whaling code authorised by leg- 
islative enactment, was that of Holland. It was decreed 
by the States-General in A. D. 1695. But though no other 
nation has ever had any written whaling law, yet the 
American fishermen have been their own legislators and 
lawyers in this matter. They have provided a system which 
for terse comprehensiveness surpasses Justinian’s Pandects 
and the By-laws of the Chinese Society for the Suppression 
of Meddling with. other People’s Business. Yes ; these laws 
might be engraven on a Queen Anne’s farthing, or the barb 
of a harpoon, and worn round the neck, so small are they. 

I. A Fast-Fisli belongs to the party fast to it. 


MOBY DICK. 373 

II. A Loose-Fisli is fair game for anybody who can 
soonest catch it. 

But what plays the mischief with this masterly code 
is the admirable brevity of it, which necessitates a vast 
volume of commentaries to expound it. 

First: What is a Fast-Fish? Alive or dead a fish is 
technically fast, when it is connected with an occupied 
ship or boat, by any medium at all controllable by the 
occupant or occupants, — a mast, an oar, a nine-inch cable, 
a telegraph wire, or a strand of cobweb, it is all the same. 
Likewise a fish is technically fast when it bears a waif, or 
any other recognised symbol of possession ; so long as the 
party wailing it plainly evince their ability at any time to 
take it alongside, as well as their intention so to do. 

These are scientific commentaries ; but the commentaries 
of the whalemen themselves sometimes consist in hard 
words and harder knocks — the Coke-upon-Littleton of the 
fist. True, among the more upright and honourable whale- 
men allowances are always made for peculiar cases, where 
it would be an outrageous moral injustice for one party to 
claim possession of a whale previously chased or killed by 
another party. But others are by no means so scrupulous. 

Some fifty years ago there was a curious case of whale- 
trover litigated in England, wherein the plaintiffs set forth 
that after a hard chase of a wjiale in the Northern seas ; 
and when indeed they (the plaintiffs) had succeeded in 
harpooning the fish ; they were at last, through peril of 
their lives, obliged to forsake not only their lines, but their 
boat itself. Ultimately the defendants (the crew of another 
ship) came up with the whale, struck, killed, seized, and 
finally appropriated it before the very eyes of the plaintiffs. 
And when those defendants were remonstrated with, their 
captain snapped his fingers in the plaintiffs’ teeth, and as- 
sured them that by way of doxology to the deed he had done, 
he would now retain their line, harpoons, and boat, which had 
remained attached to the whale at the time of the seizure. 
Wherefore the plaintiffs now sued for the recovery of the 
value of their whale, line, harpoons, and boat. 

Mr. Erskine was counsel for the defendants ; Lord Ellen- 
borough was the judge. In the course of the defence, the 
witty Erskine went on to illustrate his position, by alluding 
to a recent crim. con. case, wherein a gentleman, after in 
vain trying to bridle his wife’s viciousness, had at last 
abandoned her upon the seas of life ; but in the course of 


374 


MOBY DICK. 


years, repenting of that step, he instituted an action to 
recover possession of her. Erskine was on the other side ; 
and he then supported it by saying, that though the gentle- 
man had originally harpooned the lady, and had once had 
her fast, and only by reason of the great stress of her plung- 
ing viciousness, had at last abandoned her ; yet abandon 
her he did, so that she became a loose-fish ; and therefore 
when a subsequent gentleman re-harpooned her, the lady 
then became that subsequent gentleman’s property, along 
with whatever harpoon might have been found sticking in 
her. 

Now in the present case Erskine contended that the 
examples of the whale and the lady were reciprocally 
illustrative of each other. 

These pleadings, and the counter pleadings, being duly 
heard, the very learned judge in set terms decided, to wit, 
— That as for the boat, he awarded it to the plaintiffs, be- 
cause they had merely abandoned it to save their lives ; 
but that with regard to the controverted whale harpoons, 
and line, they belonged to the defendants ; the whale, be- 
cause it was a Loose-Fish at the time of the final capture ; 
and the harpoons and line because when the fish made off 
with them, it (the fish) acquired a property in those articles ; 
and hence anybody who afterwards took the fish had a 
right to them. Now the plaintiffs afterwards took the 
fish ; ergo, the aforesaid articles were theirs. 

A common man looking at this decision of the very learned 
Judge, might possibly object to it. But ploughed up to the 
primary rock of the matter, the two great principles laid 
down in the twin whaling laws previously quoted, and ap- 
plied and elucidated by Lord Ellenborougli in the above cited 
case ; these two laws touching Fast- Fish and Loose-Fish, I 
say, will, on reflection, be found the fundamentals of all 
human jurisprudence ; for notwithstanding its complicated 
tracery of sculpture, the Temple of the Law, like the Tem- 
ple of the Philistines, has but two props to stand on. 

Is it not a saying in every one’s mouth, Possession is half 
of the law : that is, regardless of how the thing came into 
possession ? But often possession is the whole of the law. 
What are the sinews and souls of Russian serfs and Repub- 
lican slaves but Fast-Fish, whereof possession is the -whole 
of the law ? What to the rapacious landlord is the widow’s 
last mite but a Fast-Fish? What is yonder undetected 
villain’s marble mansion with a door-plate for a waif ; what 


MOBY DICK . 


375 


is that but a Fast-Fish? What is the ruinous discount 
which Mordecai, the broker, gets from poor W oebegone, the 
bankrupt, on a loan to keep Woebegone’s family from star- 
vation; what is that ruinous discount but a Fast-Fish? 
What is the Archbishop of Savesoul’s income of £100,000 
seized from the scant bread and cheese of hundreds of thou- 
sands of broken -backed labourers (all sure of heaven without 
any of Savesoul’s nelp) what is that globular £100,000 but 
a Fast-Fish? What are the Duke of Dunder’s hereditary 
towns and hamlets but Fast- Fish ? What to that redoubted 
harpooner, John Bull, is poor Ireland, but a Fast- Fish? 
What to that apostolic lancer, Brother Jonathan, is Texas 
but a Fast-Fish ? And concerning all these, is not Posses- 
sion the whole of the law ? 

But if the doctrine of Fast-Fisli be pretty generally ap- 
plicable, the kindred doctrine’ of Loose-Fish is still more 
widely so. That is internationally and universally appli- 
cable. 

What was America in 1492 but a Loose-Fish, in which 
Columbus struck the Spanish standard by way of wailing it 
for his royal master and mistress ? What was Poland to the 
Czar ? What Greece to the Turk ? What India to England ? 
What at last will Mexico be to the United States? All 
Loose-Fish. 

What are the Rights of Man and the Liberties of the 
World but Loose-Fish? What all men’s minds and opin- 
ions but Loose-Fish ? What is the principle of religious 
belief in them but a Loose-Fish ? What to the ostentatious 
smuggling verbalists are the thoughts of thinkers but Loose- 
Fish ? What is the great globe itself but a Loose-Fish ! 
And what are you, reader, but a Loose-Fish and a Fast-Fish, 
too? 


376 


MOB Y DICK. 


CHAPTER XC. 

HEADS OK TAILS. 

“ De balena vero sufficit, si rex habeat caput, et regina caudam.” 

Bracton , l. 3, c. 3. 

Latin from the books of the Laws of England, which 
taken along with the context, means, that of all whales cap- 
tured by anybody on the coast of that land, the King, as 
Honorary Grand Harpooner, must have the head, and the 
Queen be respectfully presented with the tail. A division 
which, in the whale, is much like halving an apple ; there 
is no intermediate remainder. Now as this law, under a 
modified form, is to this day in force in England ; and as it 
offers in various respects a strange anomaly touching the 
general law of Fast and Loose-Fish, it is here treated of in 
a separate chapter, on the same courteous principle that 
prompts the English railways to be at the expense of a sep- 
arate car, specially reserved for the accommodation of roy- 
alty. In the first place, in curious proof of the fact that the 
above-mentioned law is still in force, I proceed to lay be- 
fore you a circumstance that happened within the last two 
years. 

It seems that some honest mariners of Dover, or Sand- 
wich, or some one of the Cinque Ports, had after a hard 
chase succeeded in killing and beaching a fine whale which 
they had originally descried af^ir off from the shore. Now 
the Cinque Ports are partially or somehow under the 
jurisdiction of a sort of policeman or beadle, called a Lord 
Warden. Holding the office directly from the crown, I 
believe, all the royal emoluments incident to the Cinque 
Port territories become by assignment his. By some 
writers this office is called a sinecure. But not so. Because 
the Lord Warden is busily employed at times in fobbing his 
perquisites ; which are his chiefly by virtue of that same 
fobbing of them. 


MOBY DICK. 


377 


Xow when these poor sun-burnt mariners bare-footed, and 
with their trowsers rolled high up on their eely legs, had 
wearily hauled their fat fish high and dry, promising 
themselves a good £150 from the precious oil and bone ; and 
in fantasy sipping rare tea with their wives, and good 
ale with their cronies, upon the strength of their respective 
shares ; up steps a very learned and most Christian and 
charitable gentleman, with a copy of Blackstone under his 
arm ; and laying it upon the whale’s head, he says — “ Hands 
off ! this fish, my masters, is a Fast-Fish. I seize it as the 
Lord Warden’s.” Upon this the poor mariners in their 
respectful consternation — so truly English — knowing not 
what to say, fall to vigorously scratching their heads all 
round ; meanwhile ruefully glancing from the whale to the 
stranger. But that did in nowise mend the matter, or at 
all soften the hard heart of the learned gentleman with the 
copy of Blackstone. At length one of them, after long 
scratching about for his ideas, made bold to speak. 

“Please, sir, who is the Lord Warden?” 

“ The Duke. ” 

“ But the Duke had nothing to do with taking this fish ?” 

“ It is his. ” 

“We have been at great trouble, and peril, and some 
expense, and is all that to go to the Duke’s benefit ; we 
getting nothing at all for our pains but our blisters ? ” 

“ It is his. ” 

“Is the Duke so very poor as to be forced tathis 
desperate mode of getting a livelihood ? ” 

“ It is his. ” 

“ I thought to relieve my old bedridden mother by part of 
my share of this whale. ” 

“ It is his. ” 

“ Won’t the Duke be content with a quarter or a half ?” 

“ It is his. ” 

In a word, the whale was seized and sold, and his Grace 
the Duke of Wellington received the money. Thinking 
that viewed in some particular lights, the case might by a 
bare possibility in some small degree be deemed, under the 
circumstances, a rather hard one, an honest clergyman of 
the town respectfully addressed a note to his Grace, begging 
him to take the case of those unfortunate mariners into 
full consideration. To which my Lord Duke in substance 
replied (both letters were published) that he had already 
done so, and received the money, and would be obliged to 


378 


MOB Y DICK. 


the reverend gentleman if for the future he (the reverend 
gentleman) would decline medding with other people’s 
business. Is this the still militant old man, standing at 
the corners of the three kingdoms, on all hands coercing 
alms of beggars ? 

It will readily be seen that in this case the alleged right 
of the Duke to the whale was a delegated one from the 
Sovereign. We must needs inquire then on what principle 
the Sovereign is originally invested with that right. The 
law itself has already been set forth. But Plowdon gives 
us the reason for it. Says Plowdon, the whale so caught 
belongs to the King and Queen, “ because of its superior 
excellence.” And by the soundest commentators this has 
ever been held a cogent argument in such matters. 

But why should the King have the head, and the Queen 
the tail ? A reason for that, ye lawyers ? 

In his treaties on “ Queen-Gold,” or Queen-pinmoney, an 
old King’s Bench author, one William Prynne, thus dis- 
coursed : “Ye tail is ye Queen’s, that ye Queen’s wardrobe 
may be supplied with ye whalebone.” Now this was writ- 
ten at a time when the black limber bone of the Greenland or 
Right whale was largely used in ladies’ bodices. But this 
same bone is not in the tail ; it is in the head, which is a 
sad mistake for a sagacious lawyer like Prynne. But is 
the Queen a mermaid, to be presented with a tail ? An 
allegorical meaning may lurk here. 

There are two royal fish so styled by the English law 
writers — the whale and the sturgeon ; both royal property 
under certain limitations, and nominally supplying the tenth 
branch of the crown’s ordinary revenue. I know not that 
any other author has hinted of the matter ; but by infer- 
ence it seems to me that the sturgeon must be divided in the 
same way as the whale, the King receiving the highly dense 
and elastic head peculiar to that fish, which symbolically re- 
garded, may possibly be humorously grounded upon some 
presumed congeniality. And thus there seems a reason in 
all things, even in law. 


MOBY DICK. 


379 


CHAPTER XCI. 


THE PEQUOD MEETS THE ROSE-BUD, 


“ In vain it was to rake for Ambergriese in the paunch of this 
Leviathan, insufferable fetor denying not inquiry.” 

Sir T. Browne, V. E. 

It was a week or two after the last whaling scene re- 
counted, and when we were slowly sailing over a sleepy, 
vapoury, mid-day sea, that the many noses on the Pequod’s 
deck proved more vigilant discoverers than the three pairs 
of eyes aloft. A peculiar and not very pleasant smell was 
smelt in the sea. 

“ I will bet something now,” said Stubb, “ that some- 
where hereabouts are some of those drugged whales we 
tickled the other day. I thought they would keel up before 
long.” 

Presently, the vapours in advance slid aside ; and there in 
the distance lay a ship, whose furled sails betokened that 
some sort of whale must be alongside. As we glided nearer, 
the stranger showed French colours from his peak; and by 
the eddying cloud of vulture sea-fowl that circled, and 
hovered, and swooped around him, it was plain that the 
whale alongside must be what the fishermen call a blasted 
whale, that is, a whale that has died unmolested on the sea, 
and so floated an unappropriated corpse. It may well be 
conceived, what an unsavoury odor such a mass must exhale ; 
worse than an Assyrian city in the plague, when the living 
are incompetent to bury the departed. So intolerable indeed 
is it regarded by some, that no cupidity could persuade them 
to moor alongside of it. Yet are there those who will still 
do it ; notwithstanding the fact that the oil obtained from 
such subjects is of a very inferior quality, and by no means 
of the nature of attar-of-rose. 

Coming still nearer with the expiring breeze, we saw that 
the Frenchman had a second whale alongside ; and this 
second whale seemed even more of a nosegay than the first. 
In truth, it turned out to be one of those problematical 


380 


MOBY DICK. 


whales that seem to dry up and die with a sort of prodigious 
dyspepsia, or indigestion ; leaving their defunct bodies 
almost entirely bankrupt of anything like oil. Nevertheless, 
in the proper place we shall see that no knowing fisherman 
will ever turn up his nose at such a whale as this, however 
much he may shun blasted whales in general. 

The Pequod had now swept so nigh to the stranger, that 
Stubb vowed he recognised his cuttle spade-pole entangled 
in the lines that were knotted round the tail of one of these 
whales. 

“ There’s a pretty fellow, now,” he banteringly laughed, 
standing in the ship’s bows, “there’s a jackal for ye ! I 
well know that these Crappoes of Frenchmen are but poor 
devils in the fishery ; sometimes lowering their boats for 
breakers, mistaking them for Sperm Whale spouts ; yes, 
and sometimes sailing from their port with their hold full 
of boxes of tallow candles, and cases of snuffers, foreseeing 
that all the oil they will get won’t be enough to dip the 
Captain’s wick into; aye, we all know these things ; but 
look ye, here’s a Crappo that is content with our leavings, 
the drugged whale there, I mean ; aye, and is content too 
with scraping the dry bones of that other precious fish he 
has there. Poor devil ! I say, pass round a hat, some one, 
and let’s make him a present of a little oil for dear charity’s 
sake. For what oil he’ll get from that drugged whale there, 
wouldn’t be fit to burn in a jail ; no, not in a condemned 
cell. And as for the other "whale, why, I’ll agree to get 
more oil by chopping up and trying out these three masts 
of ours, than he’ll get from that bundle of bones ; though, 
now that I think of it, it may contain something worth a good 
deal more than oil ; yes, ambergris. I wonder now if our 
old man has thought of that. It’s worth trying. Yes, I’m 
in for it ; ” and so saying he started for the quarter-deck. 

By this time the faint air had become a complete calm ; 
so that whether or no, the Pequod was now fairly entrapped 
in the smell, with no hope of escaping except by its breez- 
ing up again. Issuing from the cabin, Stubb now called 
his boat’s crew, and pulled off for the stranger. Drawing 
across her bow, he perceived that in accordance with the 
fanciful French taste, the upper part of her stem-piece was 
carved in the likeness of a huge drooping stalk, was painted 
green, and for thorns had copper spikes projecting from it 
here and there ; the whole terminating in a symmetrical 
folded bulb of a bright red color. Upon her head boards, 


MOBY DICK . 


381 


in large gilt letters, he read “ Bouton de Rose,” — Rose-but- 
ton, or Rose-bud ; and this was the romantic name of this 
aromatic ship. 

Though Stubb did not understand the .Bouton part of the 
inscription, yet the word rose , and the bulbous figure-head 
put together, sufficiently explained the whole to him. 

“ A wooden rose-bud, eh ? ” he cried with his hand to his 
nose, that will do very well ; but how like all creation it 
smells ! ” 

Now in order to hold direct communication with the 
people on deck, he had to pull round the bows to the star- 
board side, and thus come close to the blasted whale ; and 
so talk over it. 

Arrived then at this spot, with one hand still to his nose, 
he bawled — “ Bouton-de-Rose, ahoy ! are there any of you 
Bouton-de-Roses that speak English ? ” 

“ Yes,” rejoined a Guernsey-man from the bulwarks, who 
turned out to be the chief-mate. 

“Well, then, my Bouton-de-Rose-bud, have you seen the 
White Whale?” 

“ What whale ? ” 

“ The White Whale — a Sperm Whale — Moby Dick, have 
ye seen him ? ” 

“ Never heard of such a whale. Cachalot Blanche ! 
White Whale— no.” 

“ Very good, then ; good-bye now, and I’ll call again in 
a minute.” 

Then rapidly pulling back towards the Pequod, and see- 
ing Ahab leaning over the quarter-deck rail awaiting his 
report, he moulded his two hands into a trumpet and 
shouted — “ No, Sir ! No ! ” Upon which Ahab retired, and 
Stubb returned to the Frenchman. 

He now perceived that the Guernsey-man, who had just 
got into the chains, and was using a cutting-spade, had 
slung his nose in a sort of bag. 

“ What’s the matter with your nose, there ? ” said Stubb. 
“Broke it?” 

“I wish it was broken, or that I didn’t have any nose 
at all ! answered the Guernsey-man, who did not seem to 
relish the job he was at very much. “ But what are you 
holding yours for ? ” 

“ Oh, nothing ! It’s a wax nose ; I have to hold it on. 
Fine day, ain’t it. Air rather gardenny, I should say ; 
throw us a bunch of posies will ye, Bouton-de-Rose ?” 


382 


MOBY DICK . 


“ What in the devil’s name do you want here ? ” roared 
the Guernsey-man, flying into a sudden passion. 

“ Oh ! ” keep cool — cool ? yes, that’s the word ; why don’t 
you pack those whales in ice while you’re working at ’em ? 
But joking aside, though ; do you know, Rose-bud, that it’s all 
nonsense trying to get any oil out of such whales ? As 
for that dried up one there, he hasn’t a gill in his whole car- 
case.” 

“ I know that well enough ; but d’ye see, the Captain 
here won’t believe it ; this is his first voyage ; he was a 
Cologne manufacturer before. But come aboard, and may- 
hap he’ll believe you, if he won’t me ; and so I’ll get out 
of this dirty scrape.” 

“ Anything to oblige ye, my sweet and pleasant fellow,” 
rejoined Stubb, and with that he soon mounted to the deck. 
There a queer scene presented itself. The sailors, in tas- 
selled caps of red worsted, were getting the heavy tackles 
in readiness for the whales. But they worked rather slow 
and talked very fast, and seemed in anything but a good 
humour. All their noses upwardly projected from their 
faces like so many jib-booms. Now and then pairs of them 
would drop their work, and run up to the mast-head to get 
some fresh air. Some thinking they would catch the 
plague, dipped oakum in coal-tar, and at intervals held it 
to their nostrils. Others having broken the stems of their 
pipes almost short off at the bowl, were vigorously puffing 
tobacco-smoke, so that it constantly filled their olfactories. 

Stubb was struck by a shower of outcries and anathe- 
mas proceeding from the Captain’s round-house abaft ; and 
looking in that direction saw a fiery face thrust from be- 
hind the door, which was held ajar from within. This 
was the tormented surgeon, who, after in vain remonstrat- 
ing against the proceedings of the day had betaken him- 
self to the Captain’s round-house ( cabinet he called it) to 
avoid the pest ; but still, could not help yelling out his en- 
treaties and indignations at times. 

Marking all this, Stubb argued well for his scheme, and 
turning to the Guernsey-man had a little chat with him, 
during which the stranger mate expressed his detestation 
of his Captain as a conceited ignoramus, who had brought 
them all into so unsavoury and unprofitable' a pickle. Sound- 
ing him carefully, Stubb further perceived that the Guern- 
sey-man had not the slightest suspicion concerning the 
ambergris. He therefore held his peace on that head, but 


MOBY DICK. 


383 


otherwise was quite frank and confidential with him so that, 
the two quickly concocted a little plan for both circumvent- 
ing and satirising the Captain, without his at all dreaming 
of distrusting their sincerity. According to this little plan 
of theirs, the Guernsey- man, under cover of an interpreter’s 
office, was to tell the Captain what he pleased, hut as com- 
ing from Stubb ; and as for Stubb, he was to utter any 
nonsense that should come uppermost in him during the 
interview. 

By this time their destined victim appeared from his 
cabin. He was a small and dark, but rather delicate look- 
ing man for a sea-captain, with large whiskers and mous- 
tache, however ; and wore a red cotton velvet vest with 
watch-seals at his side. To this gentleman, Stubb was 
now politely introduced by the Guernsey-man, who at once 
ostentatiously put on the aspect of interpreting between 
them. 

“ What shall I say to him first?” said he. 

“ Why,” said Stubb, eyeing the velvet vest and the watch 
and seals, “ you may as well begin by telling him that he 
looks a sort of babyish to me, though I don’t pretend to be 
a judge.” 

“ He says, Monsieur,” said the Guernsey-man, in French, 
turning to his captain, “ that only yesterday his ship spoke 
a vessel, whose captain and chief-mate, with six sailors, had 
all died of a fever caught from a blasted whale they had 
brought alongside.” 

Upon this the captain started, and eagerly desired to 
know more. 

“ What now ? ” said the Guernsey-man to Stubb. 

“ Why, since he takes it so easy, tell him that now I 
have eyed him carefully, I’m quite certain that he’s no 
more fit to command a whale-ship than a St. Jago monkey. 
In fact, tell him from me he’s a baboon.” 

“ He vows and declares, Monsieur, that the other whale, 
the dried one, is far more deadly than the blasted one ; in 
fine, Monsieur, he conjures us, as we value our lives, to cut 
loose from these fish.” 

Instantly the captain ran forward, and in a loud voice 
commanded his crew to desist from hoisting the cutting- 
tackles, and at once cast loose the cables and chains con- 
fining the whales to the ship. 

“ What now ? ” said the Guernsey-man, when the captain 
had returned to them. 


884 


MOB Y DICK 


“ Why, let me see ; yes, you may as well tell him now 
that — that — in fact, tell him I’ve diddled him, and (aside to 
himself) perhaps somebody else.” 

“ He says, Monsieur, that he’s very happy to have been 
of any service to us.” 

Hearing this, the captain vowed that they were the grate- 
ful parties (meaning himself and mate) and concluded by 
inviting Stubb down into his cabin to drink a bottle of 
Bordeaux. 

u He wants you to take a glass of wine with him,” said 
the interpreter. 

“ Thank him heartily ; but tell him it’s against my prin- 
ciples to drink with the man I’ve diddled. In fact, tell him 
I must go.” 

“ He says, Monsieur, that his principles won’t admit of 
his drinking ; but that if Monsieur wants to live another 
day to drink, then Monsieur had best drop all four boats, 
and pull the ship away from these whales, for it’s so calm 
they won’t drift.” 

By this time Stubb was over the side, and getting into 
his boat, hailed the Guernsey-man to this effect, — that hav- 
ing a long tow-line in his boat, he would do what he could 
to help them by pulling out the lighter whale of the two 
from the ship’s side. While the Frenchman’s boats, then 
were engaged in towing the ship one way, Stubb benevo- 
lently towed away at his whale the other way, ostentatiously 
slacking out a most unusually long tow-line. 

Presently a breeze sprang up ; Stubb feigned to cast off 
from the whale ; hoisting his boats, the Frenchman soon in- 
creased his distance, while the Pequod slid in between him 
and Stubb’s whale. Whereupon Stubb quickly pulled to 
the floating body, and hailing the Pequod to give notice of 
his intentions, at once proceeded to reap the fruit of his 
unrighteous cunning. Seizing his sharp boat-spade, he 
commenced an excavation in the body, a little behind the 
side fin. You would almost have thought he was digging 
a cellar there in the sea ; and when at length his spade 
struck against the gaunt ribs, it was like turning up old 
Roman tiles and pottery buried in fat English learn. His 
boat’s crew were all in high excitement, eagerly helping 
their chief, and looking as anxious as gold-hunters. 

And all the time numberless fowls were diving, and 
ducking, and screaming, and yelling, and fighting around 
them. Stubb was beginning to look disappointed, espech 


MOBY DICK. 


385 


ally as the horrible nosegay increased, when suddenly from 
out the very heart of this plague, there stole a faint stream 
of perfume, which flowed through the tide of bad smells 
without being absorbed by it, as one river will flow into 
and then along with another, without at all blending with 
it for a time. 

“ I have it, I have it,” cried Stubb, with delight, striking 
something in the subterranean regions, “ a purse ! a purse ! ” 

Dropping his spade, he thrust both hands in, and drew 
out handfuls of something that looked like ripe Windsor 
soap, or rich mottled old cheese ; very unctuous and sav- 
oury withal. You might easily dent it with your thumb ; it 
is of a hue between yellow and ash colour. And this, good 
friends, is ambergris, worth a gold guinea an ounce to any 
druggist. Some six handfuls were obtained; but more 
was unavoidably lost in the sea, and still more, perhaps, 
might have been secured were it not for impatient Ahab’s 
loud command to Stubb to desist, and come on board, else 
the ship would bid them good bye. 


CHAPTER XCII. 

AMBERGRIS. 

Xow this ambergris is a very curious substance, and so 
important as an article of commerce, that in 1791 a certain 
X an tucket-born Captain Coffin was examined at the bar of 
the English House of Commons on that subject. For at 
that time, and indeed until a comparatively late day, the 
precise origin of ambergris remained, like amber itself, a 
problem to the learned. Though the word ambergris is 
but the French compound for grey amber, yet the two sub- 
stances are quite distinct. For amber, though at times 
found on the sea-coast, is also dug up in some far inland 
soils, whereas ambergris is never found except upon the 
sea. Besides, amber is a hard, transparent, brittle, odourless 
substance, used for mouth-pieces to pipes, for beads and 
ornaments ; but ambergris is soft, waxy, and so highly fra- 
grant and spicy, that it is largely used in perfumery, in 
pastiles, precious candles, hair-powders, and pomatum. 


386 


MOBY DICK. 


The Turks use it in cooking, and also carry it to Mecca, 
for the same purpose that frankincense is carried to St. 
Peter’s in Rome. Some wine merchants drop a few grains 
into claret, to flavour it. 

Who would think, then, that such fine ladies and gentle- 
men should regale themselves with an essence found in the 
inglorious bowels of a sick whale ! Yet so it is. By some, 
ambergris is supposed to be the cause, and by others the 
effect, of the dyspepsia in the whale. How to cure such a 
dyspepsia it were hard to say, unless by administering 
three or four boat loads of Brandreth’s pills, and then run- 
ning out of harm’s way, as labourers do in blasting rocks. 

I have forgotten to say that there were found in this am- 
bergris, certain hard, round, bony plates, which at first 
Stubb thought might be sailors’ trowsers buttons ; but it 
afterwards turned out that they were nothing more than 
pieces of small squid bones embalmed in that manner. 

Now that the incorruption of this most fragrant amber- 
gris should be found in the heart of such decay ; is this 
nothing ? Bethink thee of that saying of St. Paul in Corin- 
thians, about corruption and incorruption; how that we 
are sown in dishonour, but raised in glory. And likewise 
call to mind that saying of Paracelsus about what it is that 
maketh the best musk. Also forget not the strange fact 
that of all things of ill-savour, Cologne- water, in its rudi- 
mental manufacturing stages, is the worst. 

I should like to conclude the chapter with the above ap- 
peal, but cannot, owing to my anxiety to repel a charge 
often made against whalemen, and which, in the estima- 
tion of some already biassed minds, might be considered as 
indirectly substantiated by what has been said of the 
Frenchman’s two whales. Elsewhere in this volume the 
slanderous aspersion has been disproved, that the vocation 
of whaling is throughout a slatternly, untidy business. 
But there is another thing to rebut. They hint that all 
whales always smell bad. Now how did this odious stigma 
originate ? 

I opine, that it is plainly traceable to the first arrival of 
the Greenland whaling ships in London, more than two 
centuries ago. Because those whalemen did not then, and 
do not now, try out their oil at sea as the Southern ships 
have always done ; but cutting up the fresh blubber in small 
bits, thrust it through the bung holes of large casks, and 
carry it home in that manner ; the shortness of the season 


MOB Y DICK. 


887 


in those Icy Seas, and the sudden and violent storms to 
which they are exposed, forbidding any other course. The 
consequence is, that upon breaking into the hold, and un- 
loading one of these whale cemeteries, in the Greenland dock, 
a savour is given forth somewhat similar to that arising from 
excavating an old city grave-yard, for the foundations of a 
Lying-in- Hospital. 

I partly surmise also, that this wicked charge against 
whalers may be likewise imputed to the existence on the 
coast of Greenland, in former times, of a Dutch village called 
Schmerenburgh or Smeerenberg, which latter name is the 
one used by the learned Fogo V on Slack, in his great work 
on Smells, a text-hook on that subject. As its name imports 
(smeer fat ; berg, to put up), this village was founded in 
order to afford a place for the blubber of the Dutch whale 
fleet to be tried out, without being taken home to Holland 
for that purpose. It was a collection of furnaces, fat-kettles, 
and oil sheds ; and when the works were in full operation 
certainly gave forth no very pleasant savour. But all this is 
quite different with a South Sea Sperm Whaler ; which in 
a voyage of four years perhaps, after completely filling her 
hold with oil, does not, perhaps, consume fifty days in the 
business of boiling out ; and in the state that it is casked, 
the oil is nearly scentless. The truth is, that living or dead, 
if but decently treated, whales as a species are by no means 
creatures of ill odour ; nor can whalemen he recognised, as 
the people of the middle ages affected to detect a Jew in the 
company, by the nose. Nor indeed can the whale possibly 
be otherwise than fragrant, when, as a general thing, he en- 
joys such high health; taking abundance of exercise ; always 
out of doors ; though, it is true, seldom in the open air. I 
say, that the motion of a Sperm Whale’s flukes above water 
dispenses a perfume, as when a musk-scented lady rustles 
her dress in a warm parlour. What then shall I liken the 
Sperm Whale to for fragrance, considering his magnitude ? 
Must it not be to that famous elephant, with jewelled tusks, 
and redolent with myrrh, which was led out of an Indian 
town to do honour to Alexander the Great ? 


388 


MOBY DICK. 


CHAPTER XCTII. 

THE CASTAWAY. 

It was but some few days after encountering the French- 
man, that a most significant event befell the most insignifi- 
cant of the Pequod’s crew ; an event most lamentable ; and 
which ended in providing the sometimes madly merry and 
predestinated craft with a living and ever accompanying 
prophecy of whatever shattered sequel might prove her 
own. 

Now, in the whale ship, it is not every one that goes in 
the boats. Some few hands are reserved called ship-keepers, 
whose province it is to work the vessel while the boats are 
pursuing the whale. As a general thing, these ship-keepers 
are as hardy fellows as the men comprising the boats’ crews. 
But if there happen to be an unduly slender, clumsy, or tim- 
orous wight in the ship, that wight is certain to be made a 
ship-keeper. It was so in the Pequod with the little negro 
Pippin by nickname, Pip by abbreviation. Poor Pip ! ye 
have heard of him before ; ye must remember his tambourine 
on that dramatic midnight, so gloomy -jolly. 

In outer aspect, Pip and Dough-Boy made a match, like 
a black pony and a white one, of equal developments, though 
of dissimilar colour, driven in one eccentric span. But while 
hapless Dough-Boy was by nature dull and torpid in his 
intellects, Pip, though over tender-hearted, was at bottom 
very bright, with that pleasant, genial, jolly brightness 
peculiar to his tribe ; a tribe, which ever enjoy all holidays 
and festivities with finer, freer relish than any other race. 
For blacks, the year’s calendar should show naught but 
three hundred and sixty-five Fourth of Julys and New 
Year’s Days. Nor smile so, while I write that this little, 
black was brilliant, for even blackness has its brilliancy ; 
behold yon lustrous ebony, panelled in king’s cabinets. But 
Pip loved life, and all life’s peaceable securities ; so that the 
panic-striking business in which he had somehow unac- 


MOB Y DICK. 


389 


countably become entrapped, had most sadly blurred his 
brightness ; though, as ere long will be seen, what was thus 
temporarily subdued in him, in the end was destined to be 
luridly illumined by strange wild fires, that fictitiously 
showed him off to ten times the natural lustre with which in 
his native Tolland County in Connecticut, he had once en- 
livened many a fiddler’s frolic on the green ; and at melo- 
dious eventide, with his gay ha-ha ! had turned the round 
horizon into one star-belled tambourine. So, though in the 
clear air of day, suspended against a blue-veined neck, the 
pure- watered diamond drop will healthful glow ; yet, when 
the cunning jeweller would show you the diamond in its 
most impressive lustre, he lays it against a gloomy ground, 
and then lights it up, not by the sun, but by some unnat- 
ural gases. Then come out those fiery effulgences, infer- 
nally superb; then the evil-blazing diamond, once the 
divinest symbol of the crystal skies, looks like some crowm- 
jewel stolen from the King of Hell. But let us to the 
story. 

It came to pass, that in the ambergris affair Stubb’s 
after-oarsman chanced so to sprain his hand, as for a time to 
become quite maimed; and, temporarily, Pip was put into 
his place. 

The first time 1 Stubb lowered with him, Pip evinced much 
nervousness ; but happily, for that time, escaped close con- 
tact with the whale ; and therefore came off not altogether 
discreditably; though Stubb observing him, took care, 
afterwards, to exhort him to cherish his courageousness to 
the utmost, for he might often find it needful. 

Now upon the second lowering, the boat paddled upon 
the whale ; and as the fish received the darted iron, it gave 
its customary rap, which happened, in this instance, to be 
right under poor Pip’s seat. The involuntary consternation 
of the moment caused him to leap, paddle in hand, out of 
the boat ; and in such a way, that part of the slack whale 
line coming against his chest, he breasted it overboard with 
him, so as to become entangled in it, when at last plumping 
into the water. That instant the stricken whale started on 
a fierce run, the line swiftly straightened ; and presto ! poor 
Pip came all foaming up to the chocks of the boat, remorse- 
lessly dragged there by the line, which had taken several 
turns around his chest and neck. 

Tashtego stood in the bows. He was full of the fire of 
the hunt. He hated Pip for a poltroon. Snatching the boat- 


890 


MOBY DICK. 


knife from his slieath, he suspended its sharp edge over the 
line, and turning towards Stubb, exclaimed interrogatively, 
“ Cut ?” Meantime Pip’s blue, choked face plainly looked, 
Do, for God’s sake ! All passed in a flash. In less than 
half a minute, this entire thing happened. 

“ Damn him, cut ! ” roared Stubb ; and so the whale was 
lost and Pip was saved. 

So soon as he recovered himself, the poor little negro was 
assailed by yells and execrations from the crew. Tranquilly 
permitting these irregular cursings to evaporate, Stubb 
then in a plain, business-like, but still half humorous man- 
ner, cursed Pip officially and that done, unofficially gave 
him much wholesome advice. The substance was, Never 
jump from a boat, Pip, except — but all the rest was in- 
definite, as the soundest advice ever is. Now, in general, 
Stick to the boat , is your true motto in whaling ; but cases 
will sometimes happen when Leap from the boat , is still 
better. Moreover, as if perceiving at last that if he should 
give undiluted conscientious advice to Pip, he would be 
leaving him too wide a margin to jump in for the future ; 
Stubb suddenly dropped all advice, and concluded with 
a peremptory command, “ Stick to the boat, Pip, or by the 
Lord, I won’t pick you up if you jump ; mind that. W e 
can’t afford to lose whales by the likes of you ; a whale 
would sell for thirty times what you would, Pip, in Alabama. 
Bear that in mind, and don’t jump any more.” Hereby 
perhaps Stubb indirectly hinted, that though man loved his 
fellow, yet man is a money-making animal, which propensity 
too often interferes with his benevolence. 

But we are all in the hands of the gods ; and Pip jumped 
again. It was under very similar circumstances to the first 
performance ; but this time he did not breast out the line ; 
and hence, when the whale started to run, Pip was left be- 
hind on the sea, like a hurried traveller’s trunk. Alas! 
Stubb was but too true to his word. It was a beautiful, 
bounteous, blue day ; the spangled sea calm and cool, and 
flatly stretching away, all round, to the horizon, like gold- 
beater’s skin hammered out to the extremest. Bobbing up 
and down in that sea, Pip’s ebon head showed like a head 
of cloves. No boat-knife was lifted when he fell so rapidly 
astern. Stubb’s inexorable back was turned upon him ; and 
the whale was winged. In three minutes, a whole mile of 
shoreless ocean was between Pip and Stubb. Out from the 
centre of the sea, poor Pip turned his crisp, curling, black 


MOBY Dine. 


391 


head to the sun, another lonely castaway, though the loftiest 
and the brightest. 

Now, in calm weather, to swim in the open ocean is as 
easy to the practised swimmer as to ride in a spring-carriage 
ashore. But the awful lonesomeness is intolerable. The 
intense concentration of self in the middle of such a heart- 
less immensity, my God ! who can tell it ? Mark, how when 
sailors in a dead calm bathe in the open sea — mark how 
closely they hug their ship and only coast along her sides. 

But had Stubb really abandoned the poor little negro to 
his fate? No ; he did not mean to, at least. Because there 
were two boats in his wake, and he supposed, no doubt, 
that they would of course come up to Pip very quickly, and 
pick him up; though, indeed, such considerations towards 
oarsmen jeopardised through their own timidity, is not al- 
ways manifested by the hunters in all similar instances ; 
and such instances not unfrequently occur ; almost invaria- 
bly in the fishery, a coward, so called, is marked with the 
same ruthless detestation peculiar to military navies and 
armies. 

But it so happened, that those boats, without seeing Pip, 
suddenly spying whales close to them on one side, turned, 
and gave chase ; and Stubb’s boat was now so far away, and 
he and all his crew so intent upon his fish, that Pip’s ringed 
horizon began to expand around him miserably. By the 
merest chance the ship itself at last rescued him ; but from 
that hour the little negro went about the deck an idiot ; 
such, at least, they said he was. The sea had jeeringly kept 
his finite body up, but drowned the infinite of his soul. Not 
drowned entirely, though. Bather carried down alive to 
wondrous depths, where strange shapes of the unwarped 
primal world glided to and fro before his passive eyes ; and 
the miser-merman, Wisdom, revealed his hoarded heaps ; and 
among the joyous, heartless, ever-juvenile eternities, Pip 
saw the multitudinous, God-omnipresent, coral insects, that 
out of the firmament of waters heaved the colossal orbs. He 
saw God’s foot upon the treadle of the loom, and spoke it ; 
and therefore his shipmates called him mad. So man’s in- 
sanity is heaven’s sense; and wandering from all mortal 
reason, man comes at last to that celestial thought, which, 
to reason, is absurd and frantic ; and weal or woe, feels 
then uncompromised, indifferent as his God. 

For the rest, blame not Stubb too hardly, The thing is 


392 


MOBY DICK. 


common in that fishery ; and in the sequel of the narrative, 
it will then be seen what like abandonment befell my- 
self. 


CHAPTER XCIY. 

A SQUEEZE OF THE HAND. 

That whale of Stubb’s, so dearly purchased, was duly 
brought to the Pequod’s side, where all those cutting and 
hoisting operations previously detailed, were regularly 
gone through, even to the baling of the Heidelberg Tun, or 
Case. 

While some were occupied with this latter duty, others 
were employed in dragging away the larger tubs, so soon 
as filled with the sperm ; and when the proper time arrived, 
this same sperm was carefully manipulated ere going to 
the try- works, of which anon. 

It had cooled and crystallised to such a degree, that when, 
with several others, I sat down before a large Constantine’s 
bath of it, I found it strangely concreted into lumps, here 
and there rolling about in the liquid part. It was our busi- 
ness to squeeze these lumps back into fluid. A sweet and 
unctuous duty! No wonder that in old times this sperm 
was such a favourite cosmetic. Such a clearer ! such a 
sweetener! such a softener! such a delicious molifier! 
After having my hands in it for only a few minutes, my 
fingers felt like eels, and began, as it were, to serpentine 
and spiralise. 

As I sat there at my ease, cross-legged on the deck; 
after the bitter exertion at the windlass ; under a blue tran- 
quil sky ; the ship under indolent sail, and gliding so 
serenely along ; as I bathed my hands among those soft, 
gentle globules of infiltrated tissues, woven almost within 
the hour ; as they richly broke to my fingers, and discharged 
all their opulence, like fully ripe grapes their wine ; as I 
snuffed up that un contaminated aroma, — literally and truly, 
like the smell of spring violets ; I declare to you, that for 
the time I lived as in a musky meadow ; I forgot all about 


MOBY DICK. 


393 


our horrible oath ; in that inexpressible sperm, I washed my 
hands and my heart of it ; I almost began to credit the old 
Paracelsan superstition that sperm is of rare virtue in allay- 
ing the heat of anger ; while bathing in that bath, I felt 
divinely free from all ill-will, or petulance, or malice, of any 
sort whatever. 

Squeeze ! squeeze ! squeeze ! all the morning long ; I 
squeezed that sperm till I myself almost melted into it ; T 
squeezed that sperm till a strange sort of insanity came 
over me ; and I found myself unwittingly squeezing my co- 
labourers’ hands in it, mistaking their hands for the gentle 
globules. Such an abounding, affectionate, friendly, loving 
feeling did this avocation beget ; that at last I was continu- 
ally squeezing their hands, and looking up into their eyes 
sentimentally ; as much as to say, — Oh ! my dear fellow 
beings, why should we longer cherish any social acerbities, 
or know the slightest ill-humour or envy ! Come ; let us 
squeeze hands all round ; nay, let us all squeeze ourselves 
into each other ; let us squeeze ourselves universally into 
the very milk and sperm of kindness. 

Would that I could keep squeezing that sperm forever ! 
For now, since by many prolonged, repeated experiences, I 
have perceived that in all cases man must eventually lower, 
or at least shift, his conceit of attainable felicity ; not plac- 
ing it anywhere in the intellect or the fancy ; but in the 
wife, the heart, the bed, the table, the saddle, the fireside, 
the country ; now that I have perceived all this, I am ready 
to squeeze case eternally. In thoughts of the visions of 
the night, I saw long rows of angels in paradise, each with 
his hands in a jar of spermaceti. 

*######## 

Now, while discoursing of sperm, it behooves to speak of 
other things akin to it, in the business of preparing the 
sperm whale for the try- works. 

First comes white-horse, so called, which is obtained 
from the tapering part of the fish, and also from the thicker 
portions of his flukes. It is tough with congealed tendons 
— a wad of muscle — but still contains some oil. After 
being severed from the whale, the white-horse is first cut 
into portable oblongs ere going to the mincer. They look 
much like blocks of Berkshire marble. 

Plum-pudding is the term bestowed upon certain fragmen- 
tary parts of the whale’s flesh, here and there adhering to 


MOBY DICK. 


394 


the blanket of blubber, and often participating to a consid- 
erable degree in its unctuousness. It is a most refreshing, 
convivial, beautiful object to behold. As its name imports, 
it is of an exceedingly rich, mottled tint, with a bestreaked 
snowy and golden ground, dotted with spots of the deepest 
crimson and purple. It is plums of rubies, in pictures of 
citron. Spite of reason, it is hard to keep yourself from 
eating it. I confess, that once I stole behind the foremast 
to try it. It tasted something as I should conceive a royal 
cutlet from the thigh of Louis le Gros might have tasted, 
supposing him to have been killed the first day after the 
the venison season, and that particular venison season con- 
temporary with an unusually fine vintage of the vineyards 
of Champagne. 

There is another substance, and a very singular one, 
which turns up in the course of this business, but which I 
feel it to be very puzzling adequately to describe. It is 
called slobgollion ; an appellation original with the whale- 
men and even so is the nature of the substance. It is an 
ineffably oozy, stringy affair, most frequently found in the 
tubs of sperm, after a prolonged squeezing, and subsequent 
decanting. I hold it to be the wondrously thin, ruptured 
membranes of the case, coalescing. 

Gurry, so-called, is a term properly belonging to Right 
whalemen, but sometimes incidentally used by the sperm 
fishermen. It designates the dark, glutinous substance 
which is scraped off the back of the Greenland or Right 
whale, and much of which covers the decks of those inferior 
souls who hunt that ignoble leviathan. 

Nippers. Strictly this word is not indigenous to the 
whale’s vocabulary. But as applied by whalemen, it be- 
comes so. A whaleman’s nipper is a short firm strip of ten- 
dinous stuff cut from the tapering part of Leviathan’s tail : 
it averages an inch in thickness, and for the rest, is about 
the size of the iron part of a hoe. Edgewise moved along 
the oily deck, it operates like a leathern squilgee ; and by 
nameless blandishments, as of magic, allures along with it 
all impurities. 

But to learn all about these recondite matters, your best 
way is at once to descend into the blubber-room, and have 
a long talk with its inmates. This place has previously 
been mentioned as the receptacle for the blanket-pieces, 
when stript and hoisted from the whale. When the proper 
time arrives for cutting up its contents, this apartment is a 






MOBY DICK. 


395 


scene of terror to all tyros, especially by night. On one 
side, lit by a dull lantern, a space has been left clear for 
the workmen. They generally go in pairs, — a pike-and- 
gaff-man and a spade*man. The whaling-pike is similar to a 
frigate’s boar ding- weapon of the same name. The gaff is 
something like a boat-hook. With his gaff, the gaff man 
hoo£s on to a sheet of blubber, and strives to hold it from 
slipping, as the ship pitches and lurches about. Mean- 
while, the spade-man stands on the sheet itself, perpen- 
dicularly chopping it into the portable horse-pieces. This 
spade is sharp as hone can make it ; the spademan’s feet 
are shoeless ; the thing he stands on will sometimes irre- 
sistibly slide away from him, like a sledge. If he cuts off 
one of his own toes, or one of his assistants’, would you be 
very much astonished? Toes are scarce among veteran 
blubber-room men. 


CHAPTER XCV. 

THE CASSOCK. 

Had you stepped on board the Pequod at a certain junc- 
ture of this post- mortemi sing of the whale ; and had you 
strolled forward nigh the windlass, pretty sure am I that 
you would have scanned with no small curiosity a very 
strange, enigmatical object, which you would have seen 
there, lying along lengthwise in the lee scuppers. Not 
the wondrous cistern in the whale’s huge head ; not the 
prodigy of his unhinged lower jaw ; not the miracle of his 
symmetrical tail ; none of these would so surprise you, as 
half a glimpse of that unaccountable cone, — longer than a 
Kentuckian is tall, nigh a foot in diameter at the base, and 
jet-black as Yojo, the ebony idol of Queequeg. And an 
idol, indeed, it is ; or, rather, in old times, its likeness was. 
Such an idol as that found in the secret groves of Queen 
Maachah in Judea ; and for worshipping which, king Asa, 
her son, did depose her, and destroyed the idol, and burnt 
it for an abomination at the brook Kedron, as darkly set 
forth in the 15th chapter of the first book of Kings. 

Look at the sailor, called the mincer, who now comes 
along, and assisted by two allies, heavily backs the grand- 
issimus, as the mariners call it, and with bowed shoulders, 


396 


MOBY DICK. 


staggers off with it as if he were a grenadier carrying a 
dead comrade from the field. Extending it upon the fore- 
castle deck, he now proceeds cylindrically to remove its 
dark pelt, as an African hunter the pelt of a boa. This 
done he turns the pelt inside out, like a pantaloon leg ; 
gives it a good stretching, so as almost to double its 
diameter ; and at last hangs it, well spread, in the rigging, 
to dry. Ere long, it is taken down ; when removing some 
three feet of it, towards the pointed extremity, and then 
cutting two slits for arm-holes at the other end, lie length- 
wise slips himself bodily into it. The mincer now stands 
before you invested in the full canonicals of his calling. 
Immemorial to all his order, this investiture alone will 
adequately protect him, while employed in the peculiar 
functions of his office. 

That office consists in mincing the horse-pieces of blubber 
for the pots ; an operation which is conducted at a curious 
wooden horse, planted endwise against the bulwarks, and 
with a capacious tub beneath it, into which the minced 
pieces drop, fast as the sheets from a rapt orator’s desk. 
Arrayed in decent black ; occupying a conspicuous 
pulpit ; intent on Bible leaves ; what a candidate for an 
archbishopric, what a lad for a pope were this mincer ! * 


CHAPTER XCVI. 

THE TRY- WORKS. 

Besides her hoisted boats, an American whaler is out- 
wardly distinguished by her try- works. She presents the 
curious anomaly of the most solid masonry joining with oak 
and hemp in constituting the completed* ship. It is as if 
from the open field a brick-kiln were transported to her 
planks. 

The try- works are planted between the foremast and 
mainmast, the most roomy part of the deck. The timbers 
beneath are of a peculiar strength, fitted to sustain the 

* Bible leaves ! Bible leaves ! This is the invariable cry from the 
mates to the mincer. It enjoins him to be careful, and cut his work 
into as thin slices as possible, inasmuch as by so doing the business of 
boiling out the oil is much accelerated, and its quantity considerably 
increased, besides perhaps improving it in quality. 


MOBY DICK. 


397 


weight of an almost solid mass of brick and mortar, some 
ten feet by eight square, and five in height. The founda- 
tion does not penetrate the deck, but the masonry is firmly 
secured to the surface by ponderous knees of iron bracing 
it on all sides, and screwing it down to the timbers. On 
the flanks it is cased with w^ood, and at top completely 
covered by a large, sloping, battened hatchway. Remov- 
ing this hatch we expose the great try-pots, two in number, 
and each of several barrels’ capacity. When not in use, 
they are kept remarkably clean. Sometimes they are 
polished with soapstone and sand, till they shine within 
like silver punch-bowls. During the night-watches some 
cynical old sailors will crawl into them and coil themselves 
away there for a nap. While employed in polishing them 
— one man in each pot, side by side — many confidential 
communications are carried on, over the iron lips. It is a 
place also for profound mathematical meditation. It was 
in the left hand try-pot of the Pequod, with the soapstone 
diligently circling round me, that I was first indirectly 
struck by the remarkable fact, that in geometry all 
bodies gliding along the cycloid, my soapstone for ex- 
ample, will descend from any point in precisely the same 
time. 

Removing the fire-board from the front of the try- works, 
the bare masonry of that side is exposed, penetrated by the 
two iron mouths of the furnaces, directly underneath the 
pots. These mouths are fitted with heavy doors of iron. 
The intense heat of the fire is prevented from communicat- 
ing itself to the deck, by means of a shallow reservoir ex- 
tending under the entire inclosed surface of the works. 
By a tunnel inserted at the rear, this reservoir is kept re- 
plenished with water as fast as it evaporates. There are 
no external chimneys ; they open direct from the rear wall. 
And here let us go back for a moment. 

It was about nine o’clock at night that the Pequod’s 
try works were first started on this present voyage. It 
belonged to Stubb to oversee the business. 

“ All ready there? Off hatch, then, and start her. You, 
cook, fire the works.” This was an easy thing, for the car- 
penter had been thrusting his shavings into the furnace 
throughout the passage. Here be it said that in a whaling 
voyage the first fire in the try- works has to be fed for a 
time with wood. After that no wood is used, except as a 
means of quick ignition to the staple fuel. In a word, after 


398 


MOBY DICK. 


being tried out, the crisp, shrivelled blubber, now called 
scraps or fritters, still contains considerable of its unctuous 
properties. These fritters feed the flames. Like a pletho- 
ric burning martyr, or a self-consuming misanthrope, once 
ignited, the whale supplies his own fuel and burns by his 
own body. Would that he consumed his own smoke! for 
his smoke is horrible to inhale, and inhale it you must, and 
not only that, but you must live in it for the time. It has 
an unspeakable, wild, Hindoo odour about it, such as may 
lurk in the vicinity of funereal pyres. It smells like the 
left wing of the day of judgment ; it is an argument for the 
pit. 

By midnight the works were in full operation. We were 
clear from the carcase ; sail had been made ; the wind was 
freshening ; the wild ocean darkness was intense. But 
that darkness was licked up by the fierce flames, which at 
intervals forked forth from the sooty flues, and illuminated 
every lofty rope in the rigging, as with the famed Greek 
fire. The burning ship drove on, as if remorselessly com- 
missioned to some vengeful deed. So the pith and sulphur- 
freighted brigs of the bold Hydriote, Canaris, issuing from 
their midnight harbours, with broad sheets of flame for sails, 
bore down upon the Turkish frigates, and folded them in 
conflagrations. 

The hatch, removed from the top of the works, now 
afforded a wide hearth in front of them. Standing on this 
were the Tartarean shapes of the pagan harpooners, 
always the whale-ship’s stokers. With huge pronged 
poles they pitched hissing masses of blubber into the scald- 
ing pots, or stirred up the fires beneath, till the snaky 
flames darted, curling, out of the doors to catch them by 
the feet. The smoke rolled away in sullen heaps. To 
every pitch of the ship there was a pitch of the boiling oil, 
which seemed all eagerness to leap into their faces. Oppo- 
site the mouth of the works, on the further side of the wide 
wooden hearth, was the windlass. This served for a sea- 
sofa. Here lounged the watch, when not otherwise em- 
ployed, looking into the red heat of the fire, till their eyes 
felt scorched in their heads. Their tawny features, now 
all begrimed with smoke and sweat, their matted beards, 
and the contrasting barbaric brilliancy of their teeth, all 
these were strangely revealed in the capricious emblazon- 
ings of the works. As they narrated to each other their 
unholy adventures, their tales of terror told in words of 


MOB Y DICK. 


399 


mirth ; as their uncivilised laughter forked upwards out of 
them, like the flames from the furnace ; as to and fro, in 
their front, the harpooneers wildly gesticulated with their 
huge pronged forks and dippers ; as the wind howled on, 
and the sea leaped, and the ship groaned and dived, and 
yet steadfastly shot her red hell further and further into 
the blackness of the sea and the night, and scornfully 
champed the white bone in her mouth, and viciously spat 
round her on all sides ; then the rushing Pequod, freighted 
with savages, and laden with fire, and burning a corpse, 
and plunging into that blackness of darkness, seemed the 
material counterpart of her monomaniac commander’s soul. 

So seemed it to me, as I stood at her helm, and for long 
hours silently guided the way of this fire-ship on the sea. 
W rapped, for that interval, in darkness myself, I but the 
better saAV the redness, the madness, the ghastliness of 
others. The continual sight of the fiend shapes before me, 
capering half in smoke and half in fire, these at last begat 
kindred visions in my soul, so soon as I began to yield to 
that unaccountable drowsiness which ever would come over 
me at a midnight helm. 

But that night, in particular, a strange (and ever since 
inexplicable) thing occurred to me. Starting from a brief 
standing sleep, I was horribly conscious of something fatally 
wrong. The jaw-bone tiller smote my side, which leaned 
against it ; in my ears was the low hum of sails, just be- 
ginning to shake in the wind; I thought my eyes were 
open ; I was half conscious of putting my fingers to the 
lids and mechanically stretching them stiil further apart. 
But, spite of all this, I could see no compass before me to 
steer by ; though it seemed but a minute since I had been 
'watching the card, by the steady binnacle lamp illumining 
it. Nothing seemed before me but a jet gloom, now and 
then made ghastly by flashes of redness. Uppermost was 
the impression, that whatever swift, rushing thing I stood 
on was not so much bound to any haven ahead as rushing 
from all havens astern. A stark, bewildered feeling, as of 
death, came over me. Convulsively my hands grasped the 
tiller, but with the crazy conceit that the tiller was, some- 
how, in some enchanted way, inverted. My God ! what is 
the matter with me ? thought I. Lo ! in my brief sleep I 
had turned myself about, and was fronting the ship’s stern, 
with my back to her prow and the compass. In an instant 
I faced back, just in time to prevent the vessel from flying 


400 


MOBY DICK. 


up into the wind, and very probably capsizing her. How 
glad and how grateful the relief from this unnatural hallu- 
cination of the night, and the fatal contingency of being 
brought by the lee! 

Look not too long in the face of the fire, O man ! Never 
dream with thy hand on the helm ! Turn not thy back to 
the compass ; accept the first hint of the hitching tiller; 
believe not the artificial fire, when its redness makes all 
things look ghastly. To-morrow, in the natural sun, the 
skies will be bright ; those who glared like devils in the 
forking flames, the morn will show in far other, at least 
gentler, relief ; the glorious, golden, glad sun, the only true 
lamp — all others but liars ! 

Nevertheless the sun hides not Virginia’s Dismal Swamp, 
nor Rome’s accursed Campagna, nor wide Sahara, nor all 
the millions of jniles of deserts and of griefs beneath the 
moon. The sun hides not the ocean, which is the dark side 
of this earth, and which is two thirds of this earth. So, 
therefore, that mortal man who hath more of joy than 
sorrow in him, that mortal man cannot be true — nor true, 
or undeveloped. With books the same. The truest of all 
men was the Man of Sorrows, and the truest of all books is 
Solomon’s, and Ecclesiastes is the fine hammered steel of 
woe. “ All is vanity.” All. This wilful world hath not 
got hold of unchristian Solomon’s wisdom yet. But he who 
dodges hospitals and jails, and walks fast crossing grave- 
yards, and would rather talk of operas than hell ; calls 
Cowper, Young, Pascal, Rousseau, poor devils all of sick 
men ; and throughout a care-free lifetime swears by Rabe- 
lais as passing wise, and therefore jolly ; — not that man is 
fitted to sit down on tomb-stones, and break the green damp 
mould with unfathomably wondrous Solomon. 

But even Solomon, he says, “the man that wandereth 
out of the way of understanding shall remain ” (i. e , even 
while living) “ in the congregation of the dead.” Give not 
thyself up, then, to fire, lest it' invert thee, deaden thee ; as 
for the time it did me. There is a wisdom that is woe ; but 
there is a woe that is madness. And there is a Catskill 
eagle in some souls that can alike dive down into the black- 
est gorges, and soar out of them again and become invisible 
in the sunny spaces. And even if he forever flies within 
the gorge, that gorge is in the mountains ; so that even in 
his lowest swoop the mountain eagle is still higher than 
other birds upon the plain, even though they soar. 


MOBY DICK. 


401 


CHAPTER XCYII. 

THE LAMP. 

Had you descended from the Pequod’s try- works to the 
Pequod’s forecastle, where the off-duty watch were sleep- 
ing*, for one single moment you would have almost thought 
you were standing in some illumined shrine of canonised 
kings and counsellors. There they lay in their triangular 
oaken vaults, each mariner a chiselled muteness ; a score of 
lamps flashing upon his hooded eyes. 

In merchantmen, oil for the sailor is more scarce than the 
milk of queens. To dress in the dark, and eat in the dark, 
and stumble in darkness to his pallet, this is his usual lot. 
But the whaleman, as he seeks the food of light, so he lives 
in light. He makes his berth an Aladdin’s lamp, and lays 
him down in it ; so that in the pitchiest night the ship’s 
black hull still houses an illumination. 

See with what entire freedom the whaleman takes his 
handful of lamps — often but old bottles and vials, though 
— to the copper cooler at the try- works, and replenishes 
them there, as mugs of ale at a vat. He burns, too, the 
purest of oil, in its unmanufactured, and, therefore, un- 
vitiated state ; a fluid unknown to solar, lunar, or astral 
contrivances ashore. It is sweet as early grass butter in 
April. He goes and hunts for his oil, so as to-be sure of its 
freshness and genuineness, even as the traveller on the 
prairie hunts up his own supper of game. 


CHAPTER XCVIII. 

STOWING DOWN AND CLEARING UP. 

Already has it been related how the great leviathan is 
afar off descried from the mast-head ; how he is chased 
over the watery moors, and slaughtered in the valleys of 
the deep ; how he is then towed alongside and beheaded ; 
and how (on the principle which entitled the headsman of 
old to the garments in which the beheaded was killed) his 


402 


MOBY DICK 


great padded surtout becomes the property of his execu- 
tioner ; how, in due time, he is condemned to the pots, and, 
like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, his spermaceti, oil, 
and bone pass unscathed through the fire ; — but now it re- ‘ 
mains to conclude the last chapter of this part of the 
description by rehearsing — singing, if I may — the romantic 
proceeding of decanting off his oil into the casks and strik- 
ing them down into the hold, where once again leviathan 
returns to his native profundities, sliding along beneath 
the surface as before ; but, alas ! never more to rise and 
blow. 

While still warm, the oil, like hot punch, is received into 
the six-barrel casks ; and while, perhaps, the ship is pitch- 
ing and rolling this way and that in the midnight sea, the 
enormous casks are slewed round and headed over, end for 
end, and sometimes perilously scoot across the slippery deck, 
like so many land slides, till at last man-handled and stayed 
in their course ; and all round the hoops, rap, rap, go as 
many hammers as can play upon them, for now, ex officio , 
every sailor is a cooper. 

At length, when the last pint is casked, and all is cool, 
then the great hatchways are unsealed, the bowels of the 
ship are thrown open, and down go the casks to their final • 
rest in the sea. This done, the hatches are replaced, and 
hermetically closed, like a closet walled up. 

In the sperm fishery, this is perhaps one of the most 
remarkable incidents in all the business of whaling. One 
day the planks stream with freshets of blood and oil ; on 
the sacred quarter-deck enormous masses of the whale’s 
head are profanely piled ; great rusty casks lie about, as in 
a brewery yard ; the smoke from the try- works has besooted 
all the bulwarks; the mariners go about suffused with 
unctuousness ; the entire ship seems a great leviathan him- 
self ; while on all hands the din is deafening. 

But a day or two after, you look about you, and prick 
your ears in this self-same ship ; and were it not for the 
tell-tale boats and try- works, you would all but swear you 
trod some silent merchant vessel, with a most scrupulously 
neat commander. The unmanufactured sperm oil possesses 
a singularly cleansing virtue. This is the reason why the 
decks never look so white as just after what they call an 
affair of oil. Besides, from the. ashes of the burned scraps 
of the whale, a potent lye is readily made ; and whenever 
any adhesiveness from the back of the whale remains cling- 


MOBY DICK. 


403 


ing to the side, that lye quickly exterminates it. Hands 
go diligently along the bulwarks, and with buckets of water 
and rags restore them to their full tidiness. The soot is 
brushed from the lower rigging. All the numerous imple- 
ments which have been in use are likewise faithfully 
cleansed and put away. The great hatch is scrubbed and 
placed upon the try-works, completely hiding the pots ; 
every cask is out of sight ; all tackles are coiled in unseen 
nooks ; and when by the combined and simultaneous indus- 
try of almost the entire ship’s company, the whole of this 
conscientious duty is at last concluded, then the crew them- 
selves proceed to their own ablutions; shift themselves 
from top to toe ; and finally issue to the immaculate deck, 
fresh and all aglow, as bridegrooms new-leaped from out the 
daintiest Holland. 

Now, with elated step, they pace the planks in twos and 
threes, and humorously discourse of parlours, sofas, carpets, 
and fine cambrics ; propose to mat the deck ; think of hav- 
ing hangings to the top ; object not to taking tea by moon- 
light on the piazza of the forecastle. To hint to such musked 
mariners of oil, and bone, and blubber, were little short of 
audacity. They know not the thing you distantly allude 
to. Away, and bring us napkins ! 

But mark : aloft there, at the three mast heads, stand 
three men intent on spying out more whales, which, if 
caught, infallibly will again soil the old oaken furniture, 
and drop at least one small grease-spot somewhere. Yes ; 
and many is the time, when, after the severest uninterrupted 
labours, which know no night ; continuing straight through 
for ninety-six hours ; when from the boat, where they have 
swelled their wrists with all day rowing on the Line, — they 
only step to the deck to carry vast chains, and heave the 
heavy windlass, and cut and slash, yea, and in their very 
sweatings to be smoked and burned anew by the combined 
fires of the equatorial sun and the equatorial try- works ; 
when, on the heel of all this, they have finally bestirred 
themselves to cleanse the ship, and make a spotless dairy 
room of it ; many is the time the poor fellows, iust button- 
ing the necks of their clean frocks, are startled by the cry 
of “ There she blows ! ” and away they fly to fight another 
whale, and go through the whole weary thing again. Oh! 
my friends, but this "is man-killing ! Yet this is life. For 
hardly have we mortals by long toilings extracted from 
this world’s vast bulk its small but valuable sperm ; and 


404 


MOBY DICK. 


then, with weary patience, cleansed ourselves from its de- 
filements, and learned to live here in clean tabernacles of 
the soul; hardly is this done, when — There she bloics ! — the 
ghost is spouted up, and away we sail to fight some other 
world, and go through young life’s old routine again. 

Oh ! the metempsychosis ! Oh ! Pythagoras, that in 
bright Greece, two thousand years ago, did die, so good, so 
wise, so mild ; I sailed with thee along the Peruvian coast 
last voyage — and, foolish as I am, taught thee, a green 
simple boy, how to splice a rope ! 


CHAPTER XCIX. 

THE DOUBLOON. 

Ere now it has been related how Ahab was wont to pace 
his quarter-deck, taking regular turns at either limit, the 
binnacle and mainmast ; but in the multiplicity of other 
things requiring narration it has not been added how that 
sometimes in these walks, when most plunged in his mood, 
he was wont to pause in turn at each spot, and stand there 
strangely eyeing the particular object before him. When 
he halted before the binnacle, with his glance fastened on 
the pointed needle in the compass, that glance shot like a 
javelin with the pointed intensity of his purpose ; and when 
resuming his walk he again paused before the mainmast, 
then, as the same riveted glance fastened upon the riveted 
gold coin there, he still wore the same aspect of nailed firm- 
ness, only dashed with a certain wild longing, if not hope- 
fulness. 

But one morning, turning to pass the doubloon, he seemed 
to be newly attracted by the strange figures and inscrip- 
tions stamped on it, as though now for the first time be- 
ginning to interpret for himself in some monomaniac way 
whatever significance might lurk in them. And some cer- 
tain significance lurks in all things, else all things are 
little worth, and the round world itself but an empty cipher 
except to sell by the cartload, as they do hills about Boston, 
to fill up some morass in the Milky Way. 

Now this doubloon was of purest, virgin gold, raked 
somewhere out of the heart of gorgeous hills, whence, east 
and west, over golden sands, the head- waters of many a 


MOBY DICK. 


405 


Pactolus flows. And though now nailed amidst all the 
rustiness of iron bolts and the verdigris of copper spikes, 
yet, untouchable and immaculate to any foulness, it still 
preserved its Quito glow. Nor, though placed amongst a 
ruthless crew and every hour passed by ruthless hands, and 
through the livelong nights shrouded with thick darkness 
which might cover any pilfering approach, nevertheless 
every sunrise found the doubloon where the sunset left it 
last. For it was set apart and sanctified to one awe-strik- 
ing end ; and however wanton in their sailor ways, one and 
all, the mariners revered it as the white whale’s talisman. 
Sometimes they talked it over in the weary watch by night, 
wondering whose it was to be at last, and whether he would 
ever live to spend it. 

Now those noble golden coins of South America are as 
medals of the sun and tropic token-pieces. Here palms, 
alpacas, and volcanoes; sun’s disks and stars; ecliptics, 
horns-of-plenty, and rich banners waving, are in luxuriant 
profusion stamped ; so that the precious gold seems almost 
to derive an added preciousness and enhancing glories, by 
passing through those fancy mints, so Spanishly poetic. 

It so chanced that the doubloon of the Pequod was a 
most wealthy example of these things. On its round border 
it bore the letters, REPUBLICA DEL ECUADOR : 
QUITO. So this bright coin came from a country planted 
in the middle of the world, and beneath the great equator, 
and named after it ; and it had been cast midway up the 
Andes, in the unwaning clime that knows no autumn. 
Zoned by those letters you saw the likeness of three Andes’ 
summits ; from one a flame ; a tower on another ; on the 
third a crowing cock ; while arching over all was a segment 
of the partitioned zodiac, the signs all marked with their 
usual cabalistics, and the keystone sun entering the equi- 
noctial point at Libra. 

Before this equatorial coin, Ahab, not unobserved by 
others, was now pausing. 

“There’s something ever egotistical in mountain-tops 
and towers, and all other grand and lofty things ; look here, 
— three peaks as proud as Lucifer. The firm tower, that 
is Ahab; the volcano, that is Ahab; the . courageous, the 
undaunted, and victorious fowl, that, too, is Ahab ; all are 
Ahab ; and this round gold is but the image of the rounder 
globe, which, like a magician’s glass, to each and every man 
in turn but mirrors back his own mysterious self. Great 


406 


MOB Y DICK. 


pains, small gains for those who ask the world to solve 
them ; it cannot solve itself. Methinks now this coined sun 
wears a ruddy face ; but see ! aye, he enters the sign of 
storms, the equinox ! and but six months before he wheeled 
out of a former equinox at Aries ! From storm to storm ! 
So be it, then. Born in throes, ’tis fit that man should 
live in pains and die in pangs ! So be it, then ! Here’s stout 
stuff for woe to work on. So be it, then.” 

“No fairy fingers can have pressed the gold, but devil’s 
claws must have left their mouldings there since yesterday,” 
murmured Starbuck to himself, leaning against the huh 
warks. “ The old man seems to read Belshazzar’s awful 
writing. I have never marked the coin inspectingly. He 
goes below ; let me read. A dark valley between three 
mighty, heaven-abiding peaks, that almost seem the 
Trinity, in some faint earthly symbol. So in this vale of 
Heath, God girds us round ; and over all our gloom, the sun 
of Righteousness still shines a beacon and a hope. If we 
bend down our eyes, the dark vale shows her mouldy soil ; 
but if we lift them, the bright sun meets our glance half 
way, to cheer. Yet, oh, the great sun is no fixture ; and if, 
at midnight, we would fain snatch some sweet solace from 
him, we gaze for him in vain ! This coin speaks wisely, 
mildly, truly, but still sadly to me. I will quit it, lest 
Truth shake me falsely.” 

“ There now’s the old Mogul,” soliloquised Stubb by the 
try- works, “ he’s been twigging it ; and there goes Starbuck 
from the same, and both with faces which I should say 
might be somewhere within nine fathoms long. And ail 
from looking at a piece of gold, which did I have it now on 
Negro Hill or in Corlaer’s Hook, I’d not look at it very long 
ere spending it. Humph ! in my poor, insignificant opinion, 
I regard this as queer. I have seen doubloons before now 
in my voyagings ; your doubloons of old Spain, your doub- 
loons of Peru, your doubloons of Chili, your doubloons of 
Bolivia, your doubloons of Popayan ; with plenty of gold 
moidores and pistoles, and joes, and half joes, and quarter 
joes. What then should there be in this doubloon of the 
Equator that is so killingly wonderful ? By Golconda ! let 
me read it once. Halloa ! here’s signs and wonders truly ! 
That, now, is what old Bowditch in his Epitome calls the 
zodiac, and what my almanac below calls ditto. I’ll get 
the almanac and as I have heard devils can be raised with 
Daboll’s arithmetic, I’ll try my hand at raising a meaning 


MOBY DICK. 


407 


out of these queer curvicues here with the Massachusetts 
calendar. Here’s the book. Let’s see now. Signs and 
wonders ; and the sun, he’s always among ’em. Hem, hem, 
hem ; here they are — here they go— all alive : — Aries, or the 
Ram ; Taurus, or the Bull and Jimimi ! here’s Gemini him- 
self, or the Twins. Well ; the sun he wheels among ’em. 
Aye, here on the coin he’s just crossing the threshold be- 
tween two of twelve sitting-rooms all in a ring. Book ! 
you lie there ; the fact is, you books must know your places. 
You’ll do to give us the bare words and facts, but we come 
in to supply the thoughts. That’s my small experience, so 
far as the Massachusetts calendar, and Bowditch’s naviga- 
tor, and Daboll’s arithmetic go. Signs and wonders, eh ? 
Pity if there is nothing wonderful in signs, and significant 
in wonders ! There’s a clue somewhere ; wait a bit ; hist 
— hark ! By Jove, I have it ! Look you, Doubloon, your 
zodiac here is the life of man in one round chapter ; and 
now I’ll read it off, straight out of the book. Come, Alma- 
nac ! To begin : there’s Aries, or the Ram — lecherous dog, 
he begets us ; then, Taurus, or the Bull — he bumps us the 
first thing; then Gemini, or the Twins — that is, Virtue and 
Vice ; we try to reach Virtue, when lo ! comes Cancer the 
Crab, and drags us back ; and here, going from Virtue, Leo, 
a roaring Lion, lies in the path — he gives a few fierce bites 
and surly dabs with his paw; we escape, and hail Virgo, 
the Virgin ! that’s our first love ; we marry and think to be 
happy for aye, when pop comes Libra, or the Scales — happi- 
ness weighed and found wanting ; and while we are very 
sad about that, Lord ! how we suddenly jump, as Scorpio, 
or the Scorpion, stings us in rear ; we are curing the wound, 
when whang come the arrows all round; Sagittarius, or 
the Archer, is amusing himself. As we pluck out the shafts, 
stand aside ! here’s the battering-ram, Capricornus, or the 
Goat ; full tilt, he comes rushing, and headlong we are tossed ; 
when Aquarius, or the Water-bearer, pours out his whole 
deluge and drowns us ; and to wind up with Pisces, or the 
Fishes, we sleep. There’s a sermon now, writ in high 
heaven, and the sun goes through it every year, and yet 
comes out of it all alive and hearty. Jollily he, aloft there, 
wheels through toil and trouble ; and so, alow here, does 
jolly Stubb. Oh, jolly’s the word for aye! Adieu, Doub- 
loon ! But stop ; here comes little King-Post ; dodge round 
the try- works, now, and let’s hear what he’ll have to say. 


408 


MOBY T)TCK. 


There ; lie’s before it ; he’ll out with something presently. 
So, so ; he’s beginning.” 

“I see nothing here, but a round thing made of gold, and 
whoever raises a certain whale, this round thing belongs to 
him. So, what’s all this staring been about ? It is worth 
sixteen dollars, that’s true ; and at two cents the cigar, that’s 
nine hundred and sixty cigars. I won’t smoke dirty pipes 
like Stubb, but I like cigars, and here’s nine hundred and 
sixty of them ; so here goes Flask aloft to spy ’em out.” 

“ Shall I call that wise or foolish, now ; if it be really wise 
it has a foolish look to it ; yet, if it be really foolish, then 
has it a sort of wiseish look to it. But, avast ; here comes 
our old Manxman — the old hearse-driver, he must have been 
that is, before he took to the sea. He luffs up before the 
doubloon ; halloa, and goes round on the other side of the 
mast ; why, there’s a horse-shoe nailed on that side ; and 
now he’s back again; what does that mean? Hark! lie’s 
muttering — voice like an old worn-out coffee-mill. Prick 
ears, and listen ! ” 

“ If the White Whale be raised, it must be in a month 
and a day, when the sun stands in some one of these signs. 
I’ve studied signs, and know their marks ; they were taught 
me two score years ago, by the old witch in Copenhagen. 
Now, in what sign will the sun then be ? The horse-shoe 
sign ; for there it is, right opposite the gold. And what’s 
the horse-shoe sign ? The lion is the horse-shoe sign — the 
roaring and devouring lion. Ship, old ship ! my old head 
shakes to think of thee.” 

“ There’s another rendering now ; but still one text. All 
sorts of men in one kind of world, you see. Dodge again ! 
here comes Queequeg — all tattooing — looks like the signs of 
the Zodiac himself. What says the Cannibal ? As I live 
he’s comparing notes ; looking at his thigh bone ; thinks the 
sun is in the thigh, or in the calf, or in the bowels, I suppose 
as the old women talk Surgeon’s Astronomy in the back 
country. And by Jove, he’s found something there in the 
vicinity of his thigh — I guess it’s Sagittarius, or the Archer. 
No : he don’t know what to make of the doubloon ; he takes 
it for an old button off some king’s trowsers. But, aside 
again ! here comes that ghost-devil, Fedallah ; tail coiled out 
of sight as usual, oakum in the toes of his pumps as usual. 
What does he say, with that look of his ? Ah, only makes 
a sign to the sign and bows himself ; there is a sun on the 
coin — fire worshipper, depend upon it. Ho ! more and more. 


MOB Y DICK. 


409 


This way comes Pip — poor boy ! would he had died, or I ; 
lie’s half horrible to me. He too has been watching all of 
these interpreters — myself included — and look now, he 
comes to read, with that unearthly idiot face. Stand away 
again and hear him. Hark ! 

“I look, you look, he looks ; we look, ye look, they look.” 

“ Upon my soul, he’s been studying Murray’s Grammar ! 
Improving his mind, poor fellow ! But what’s that he says 
now — hist ! ” 

“ I look, you look, he looks ; we look, ye look, they look.” 

“ Why, he’s getting it by heart — hist ! again.” 

“ I look, you look, he looks ; we look, ye look, they look.” 

“ W ell, that’s funny.” 

“ And I, you and he ; and we, ye, and they, are all bats ; 
and I’m a crow, especially when I stand a’top of this pine 
tree here. Caw ! caw ! caw ! caw ! caw ! caw ! Ain’t I a 
crow ? And where’s the scare-crow ? There he stands ; 
two bones stuck into a pair of old trowsers, and two more 
poked into the sleeves of an old jacket.” 

“ Wonder if he means me ? — complimentary ! — poor lad ! 
— I could go hang myself. Any way, for the present, I’ll 
quit Pip’s vicinity. I can stand the rest, for they have plain 
wits ; but he’s too crazy- witty for my sanity. So, so, I leave 
him muttering.” 

“Here’s the ship’s navel, this doubloon here, and they 
are all on fire to unscrew it. But, unscrew your navel, and 
what’s the consequence ? Then again, if it stays here, that 
is uglyi too, for when aught’s nailed to the mast it’s a sign 
that things grow desperate. Ha, ha ! old Ahab ! the White 
Whale ; he’ll nail ye ! This is a pine tree. My father, in 
old Tolland county, cut down a pine tree once, and found 
a silver ring grown over in it ; some old darkey’s wedding 
ring. How did it get there? And so they’ll say in the 
resurrection, when they come to fish up this old mast, and 
find a doubloon lodged in it, with bedded oysters for the 
shaggy bark. Oh, the gold ! the precious, precious, gold ! 
the green miser’ll hoard ye soon ! Hish ! hish ! God goes 
’mong the worlds blackberrying. Cook ! ho, cook ! and cook 
us! Jenny! hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, Jenny, Jenny! and 


410 


MOBY DICK. 


CPPAPTER C. 

LEG AND ARM. 

THE PE QUOD, OF NANTUCKET, MEETS THE SAMUEL ENDERBY, OF 
LONDON. 

“ Ship, ahoy ! Hast seen the White Whale ? ” 

So cried Ahab, once more hailing a ship showing English 
colours, bearing down under the stern. Trumpet to mouth, 
the old man was standing in his hoisted quarter-boat, his 
ivory leg plainly revealed to the stranger captain, who was 
carelessly reclining in his own boat’s bow. IPe was a 
darkly-tanned, burly, good-natured, fine-looking man, of 
sixty or thereabouts, dressed in a spacious roundabout, that 
hung round him in festoons of blue pilot-cloth ; and one 
empty arm of this jacket streamed behind him like the 
broidered arm of a hussar’s surcoat. 

“ Hast seen the White Whale ? ” 

“ See you this ? ” and withdrawing it from the folds that 
had hidden it, he held up a white arm of sperm whale bone 
terminating in a wooden head like a mallet. 

“ Man my boat ! ” cried Ahab, impetuously, and tossing 
about the oars near him — “ Stand by to lower ! ” 

In less than a minute, without quitting his little craft, he 
and his crew were dropped to the water, and were soon 
alongside of the stranger. But here a curious difficulty 
presented itself. In the excitement of the moment Ahab 
had forgotten that since the loss of his leg he had never 
once stepped on board of any vessel at sea but his own, and 
then it was always by an ingenious and very handy 
mechanical contrivance peculiar to thePequod, and a thing 
not to be rigged and shipped in any other vessel at a 
moment’s warning. Now, it is no very easy matter for any- 
body — except those who are almost hourly used to it, like 
whalemen — to clamber up a ship’s side from a boat on the 
open sea ; for the great swells now lift the boat high up 
towards the bulwarks, and then instantaneously drop it 
half way down to the kelson. So, deprived of one leg, and 
the strange ship of course being altogether unsuppliecl with 


MOBY DICK. 


411 


the kindly invention, Ahab now found himself abjectly 
reduced to a clumsy landsman again ; hopelessly eyeing 
the uncertain changeful height he could hardly hope to 
attain. 

It has before been hinted, perhaps, that every little 
untoward circumstance that befell him, and which indirectly 
sprang from his luckless mishap, almost invariably irritated 
or exasperated Ahab. And in the present instance, all 
this was heightened by the sight of the two officers of the 
strange ship, leaning over the side, by the perpendicular 
ladder of nailed cleets there, and swinging towards him a 
a pair of tastefully-ornamented man-ropes ; for at first they 
did not seem to bethink them that a one-legged man must 
be too much of a cripple to use their sea bannisters. But 
this awkwardness only lasted a minute, because the strange 
captain, observing at a glance how affairs stood, cried out 
“ I see I see ! ■ — avast heaving there ! Jump, boys, and 
swing over the cutting-tackle.” 

As good luck would have it, they had had a whale along- 
side a day or two previous, and the great tackles were still 
aloft, and the massive curved blubber-hook, now clean and 
dry, was still attached to the end. This was quickly lowered 
to Ahab, who at once comprehending it all, slid his solitary 
thigh into the curve of the hook (it was like sitting in the 
fluke of an anchor, or the crotch of an apple tree), and then 
giving the word, held himself fast, and at the same time 
also helped to hoist his own weight, by pulling hand-over 
hand upon one of the running parts of the tackle. Soon he 
was carefully swung inside the high bulwarks, and gently 
landed upon the capstan head. With his ivory arm frankly 
thrust forth in welcome, the other captain advanced, 
and Ahab, in putting out his ivory leg, and crossing the 
ivory arm (like two sword-fishblades) cried out in his 
walrus way, “ Aye, aye, hearty ! let us shake bones to- 
gether ! — an arm and a leg !— an arm that never can shrink 
d’ye see ; and a leg that never can run. Where did’st thou 
see the White Whale ?— how long ago ? ” 

“ The White Whale,” said the Englishman, pointing his 
ivory arm towards the East, and taking a rueful sight along 
it, as if it had been a telescope ; “ there I saw him, on the 
Line, last season.” 

“ And he took that arm off, did he ? ” asked Ahab, now 
sliding down from the capstan, and resting on the English- 
man’s shoulder, as he did so. 


412 


MOBY DICK . 


“ Aye, he was the cause of it, at least ; and that leg to ? ” 

“ Spin me the yarn,” said Ahab ; “ how was it ? ” 

“ It was the first time in my life that I ever cruised op 
the Line,” began the Englishman. “I was ignorant of the 
White Whale at that time. Well, one day we lowered for 
a pod of four or five whales, and my boat fastened to one 
of them ; a regular circus horse he was, too, that went milling 
and milling round so, that my boat’s crew could only trim 
dish, by sitting all their sterns on the outer gunwale. 
Presently up breaches from the bottom of the sea a bounc- 
ing great whale, with a milky- white head and hump, all 
crows’ feet and wrinkles.” 

“ It was he, it was he ! ” cried Ahab, suddenly letting out 
his suspended breath. 

“ And harpoons sticking in near his starboard fin.” 

“Aye, aye — they were mine — my irons,” cried Ahab, 
exultingly — “ but on ! ” 

“ Give me a chance, then,” said the Englishman, good- 
humouredly. “Well, this old great-grandfather, with the 
white head and hump, runs all afoam into the pod, and 
goes to snapping furiously at my fast-line.” 

“ Aye, I see ! — wanted to part it ; free the fast-fish — an 
old trick — I know him.” 

“How it was exactly,” continued the one-armed com- 
mander, “ I do not know ; but in biting the line, it got foul 
of his teeth, caught there somehow; but we didn’t know it 
then; so that when we afterwards pulled on the line, 
bounce we came plump on to his hump! instead of the 
other whale’s ; that went off to windward, all fluking. 
Seeing how matters stood, and what a noble great whale it 
was — the noblest and biggest I ever saw, sir, in my life — 
I resolved to capture him, spite of the boiling rage he 
seemed to be in. And thinking the hap-hazard line would 
get loose, or the tooth it was tangled to might draw (for I 
have a devil of a boat’s crew for a pull on a whale-line) ; 
seeing all this, I say, I jumped into my first mate’s boat— 
Mr. Mounttop’s here (by the way, Captain— Mounttop ; 
Mounttop — the captain) ; — as I was saying, I jumped into 
Mounttop’s boat, which, d’ye see, Avas gunwale and gunwale 
with mine, then ; and snatching the first harpoon, let this 
old great-grandfather have it. But, Lord, look you, sir- 
hearts and souls alive, man — the next instant, in a jiff, I 
was blind as a bat— both eyes out — all befogged and be- 
deadened with black foam— the whale’s tail looming 


MOBY DICK. 


413 


straight up out of it, perpendicular in the air, like a marble 
steeple. No use sterning all, then ; hut as I was groping 
at midday, with a blinding sun, all crown-jewels; as I was 
groping, I say, after the second iron, to toss it overboard 
— down comes the tail like a Lima tower, cutting my boat 
in two, leaving each half in splinters ; and, flukes first, the 
white hump backed through the wreck, as though it was 
all chips. We all struck out. To escape his terrible Sail- 
ings, I seized hold of my harpoon-pole sticking in him, and 
for a moment clung to that like a sucking fish. But a 
combing sea dashed me off, and at the same instant, the 
fish, taking one good dart forwards, went down like a flash ; 
and the barb of that cursed second iron towing along near 
me caught me here” (clapping his hand just below his shoul- 
der) ; “ yes, caught me just here, I say, and bore me down 
to Hell’s flames, I was thinking; when, when, all of a sud- 
den, thank the good God, the barb ript its way along the 
flesh — clear along the whole length of my arm — came out 
nigh my wrist, and up I floated ; — and that gentleman there 
will tell you the rest (by the way, captain — Dr. Bunger, 
ship’s surgeon: Bunger, my lad, — the captain). Now, 
Bunger boy, spin your part of the yarn.” 

The professional gentleman thus familiarly pointed out, 
had been all the time standing near them, with nothing 
specific visible, to denote his gentlemanly rank on board. 
His face was an exceedingly round but sober one ; he was 
dressed in a faded blue Avoollen frock or shirt, and patched 
trowsers ; and had thus far been dividing his attention be- 
tween a marlingspike he held in one hand, and a pill-box 
held in the other, occasionally casting a critical glance at 
the ivory limbs of the two crippled captains. But, at the 
superior’s introduction of him to Ahab, he politely bowed, 
and straightway went on to do his captain’s bidding. 

“It was a shocking bad wound,” began the whale-sur- 
geon ; “ and, taking my advice, Captain Boomer here, stood 
our old Sammy ” 

“ Samuel Enderby is the name of my ship,” interrupted 
the one-armed captain, addressing Aliab; “go on, boy.” 

“ Stood our old Sammy off to the northward, to get out 
of the blazing hot weather there on the Line. But it was 
no use — I did all I could ; sat up with him nights ; was 
very severe with him in the matter of diet ” 

“ Oh, very severe ! ” chimed in the patient himself ; then 
suddenly altering his voice, “Drinking hot rum toddies 


414 


MOBY DICK. 


with me every night, till he couldn’t see to put on the ban- 
dages ; and sending me to bed, half seas over, about three 
o’clock in the morning. Oh, ye stars ! he sat up with me 
indeed, and was very severe in my diet. Oh! a great 
watcher, and very dietetically severe, is Dr. Bunger. (Bun- 
ger, you dog, laugh out! why don’t ye? You know you’re 
a precious jolly rascal.) But, heave ahead, boy, I’d rather 
be killed by you than kept alive by any other man.” 

“ My captain, you must have ere this perceived, respected 
sir ” — said the imperturbable godly-looking Bunger, slightly 
bowing to Ahab — “ is apt to be facetious at times ; he spins 
us many clever things of that sort. But I may as well say 
— en passant, as the French remark — that I myself — that 
is to say, Jack Bunger, late of the reverend clergy — am a 
strict total abstinence man ; I never drink ” 

“Water!” cried the captain; “he never drinks it; it’s 
a sort of fits to him; fresh water throws him into the 
hydrophobia ; but go on — go on with the arm story.” 

“Yes, I may as well,” said the surgeon, coolly. “I was 
about observing, sir, before Captain Boomer’s facetious in- 
terruption, that spite of my best and severest endeavours, 
the wound kept getting worse and worse ; the truth was, 
sir, it was as ugly gaping wound as surgeon ever saw ; more 
than two feet and several inches long. I measured it with 
the lead line. In short, it grew black ; I knew what was 
threatened, and off it came. But I had no hand in ship- 
ping that ivory arm there ; that thing is against all rule ” 
— pointing at it with the marlingspike — “ that is the cap- 
tain’s work, not mine ; he ordered the carpenter to make it ; 
he had that club-hammer there put to the end, to knock 
some one’s brains out with, I suppose, as he tried mine once. 
He flies into diabolical passions sometimes. Do ye see this 
dent, sir ” — removing his hat, and brushing aside his hair, 
and exposing a bowl-like cavity in his skull, but which 
bore not the slightest scarry trace, or any token of ever 
having been a wound — “Well, the captain there will tell 
you how that came here ; he knows.” 

“No, I don’t,” said the captain, “but his mother did; he 
was born with it. Oh, you solemn rogue, you — you Bun- 
ger ! was there ever such another Bunger in the watery 
world? Bunger, when you die, you ought to die in pickle, 
you dog ; you should be preserved to future ages, you 
rascal.” 

“ What became of the White Whale ? ” now cried Ahab, 


MOBY DICK. 


415 


who thus far had been impatiently listening to this by-play 
between the two Englishmen. 

“Oh,” cried the one-armed captain, “Oh, yes! Well; 
after he sounded, we didn’t see him again for some time; in 
fact, as I before hinted, I didn’t then know what whale it was 
that had served me such a trick, till some time after- 
wards, when coming back to the Line, we heard about 
Moby Dick — as some call him — and then I knew it was he.” 

“ Did’st thou cross his wake again ? ” 

“ Twice.” 

“ But could not fasten ? ” 

“ Didn’t want to try to : ain’t one limb enough ? What 
should I do without this other arm ? And I’m thinking 
Moby Dick doesn’t bite so much as he swallows.” 

“Well, then,” interrupted Bunger, “give him your left 
arm for bait to get the right. Do you know, gentlemen ” — 
very gravely and mathematically bowing to each Captain in 
succession — “ Do you know, gentlemen, that the digestive 
organs of the whale are so inscrutably constructed by Divine 
Providence, that it is quite impossible for him to completely 
digest even a man’s arm ? And he knows it too. So that 
what you take for the White Whale’s malice is only his 
awkwardness. For he never means to swallow a single limb ; 
he only thinks to terrify by feints. But sometimes he is like 
the old juggling fellow, formerly a patient of mine in Ceylon, 
that making believe swallow jack-knives, once upon a time 
let one drop into him in good earnest, and there it stayed for 
a twelvemonth or more ; when I gave him an emetic, and 
he heaved it up in small tacks, d’ye see. No possible way 
for him to digest that jack-knife, and fully incorporate it 
into his general bodily system. Yes, Captain Boomer, if 
you are quick enough about it, and have a mind to pawn 
one arm for the sake of the privilege of giving decent burial 
to the other, why in that case the arm is yours ; only let 
the whale have another chance at you shortly, that’s all.” 

“ No, thank ye, Bunger,” said the English Captain, “ he’s 
welcome to the arm he has, since I can’t help it, and didn’t 
know him then ; but not to another one. No more White 
Whales for me ; I’ve lowered for him once, and that has 
satisfied me. There would be great glory in killing him, I 
know that ; and there is a ship-load of precious sperm in him, 
but, hark ye, he’s best let alone ; don’t you think so, Captain ? ” 
— glancing at the ivory leg. 

“ He is. But he will still be hunted, for all that. What 


416 


MOBY DICK. 


is best let alone, that accursed thing is not always what 
least allures. He’s all a magnet! How long since thou 
saw’st him last? Which way heading?” 

“ Bless my soul, and curse the foul fiend’s,” cried Bunger 
stoopingly walking round Ahab, and like a dog, strangely 
snuffing ; “ this man’s blood — bring the thermometer ! — it’s 
at the boiling point ! — his pulse makes these planks beat ! — 
sir ! ” — taking a lancet from his pocket, and drawing near 
to Ahab’s arm. 

“ Avast ! ” roared Ahab, dashing him against the bulwarks 
— “ Man the boat ! Which way heading ? ” 

“ Good God ! ” cried the English Captain, to whom the 
question was put. “ What’s the matter ? He was heading 
east, I think. — Is your Captain crazy?” whispering Fed- 
allah. 

But Fedallah, putting a finger on his lip, slid over the 
bulwarks to take the boat’s steering oar, and Ahab, swing- 
ing the cutting-tackle towards him, commanded the ship’s 
sailors to stand by to lower. 

In a moment he was standing in the boat’s stern, and the 
Manilla men were springing to their oars. In vain the 
English Captain hailed him. With back to the stranger 
ship, and face set like a flint to his own, Ahab stood upright 
till alongside of the Pequod. 


CHAPTER Cl. 

THE DECANTER. 

Ere the English ship fades from sight, be it set down 
here, that she hailed from London, and was named after 
the late Samuel Enderby, merchant of that city, the original 
of the famous whaling house of Enderby & Sons ; a house 
which in my poor whaleman’s opinion, comes not far behind 
the united royal houses of the Tudors and Bourbons, in 
point of real historical interest. How long, prior to the 
year of our Lord 1775, this great whaling house was in ex- 
istence, my numerous fish documents do not make plain ; 
but in that year (1775) it fitted out the first English ships 
that ever regularly hunted the Sperm Whale ; though for 
some score of years previous (ever since 1726) our valiant 
Coffins and Maceys of Nantucket and the Vineyard had in 


MOBY DICK. 


417 


large fleets pursued that Leviathan, but only in the North 
and South Atlantic : not elsewhere. Be it distinctly re- 
corded here, that the Nantucketers were the first among 
mankind to harpoon with civilised steel the great Sperm 
Whale; and that for half a century they were the only 
people of the whole globe who so harpooned him. 

In 1778, a fine ship, the Amelia, fitted out for the express 
purpose, and at the sole charge of the vigorous Enderbys, 
boldly rounded Cape Horn, and was the first among the 
nations to lower a whale-boat of any sort in the great South 
Sea. The voyage was a skilful and lucky one ; and return- 
ing to her berth with her hold full of the precious sperm, 
the Amelia’s example was soon followed by other ships, 
English and American, and thus the vast Sperm Whale 
grounds of the Pacific were thrown open. But not content 
with this good deed, the indefatigable house again bestirred 
itself : Samuel and all his Sons — how many, their mother 
only knows — and under their immediate auspices, and 
partly, I think, at their expense, the British government 
was induced to send the sloop-of-war Rattler on a whaling 
voyage of discovery into the South Sea. Commanded by a 
naval Post- Captain, the Rattler made a rattling voyage of 
it, and did some service ; how much does not appear. But 
this is not all. In 1819, the same house fitted out a discovery 
whale ship of their own, to go on a tasting cruise to the 
remote waters of Japan. That ship — well called the 
“ Syren ” — made a noble experimental cruise ; and it was 
thus that the great Japanese Whaling Ground first became 
generally known. The Syren in this famous voyage was 
commanded by a Captain Coffin, a Nantucketer. 

All honour -to the Enderbys, therefore, whose house, I 
think, exists to the present day; though doubtless the 
original Samuel must long ago have slipped his cable for 
the great South Sea of the other world. 

The ship named after him was worthy of the honour, being 
a very fast sailer and a noble craft every way. I boarded 
her once at midnight somewhere off the Patagonian coast, 
and drank good flip down in the forecastle. It was a fine 
gam we had, and they were all trumps— every soul on 
board. A short life to them, and a jolly death. And that 
fine gam I had— long, very long after old Ahab touched 
her planks with his ivory heel — it minds me of the noble, 
solid, Saxon hospitality of that ship ; and may my parson 
forget me, and the devil remember me, if I ever lose sight 


418 


MOBY DICK. 


of it. Flip ? Did I say we had flip? Yes, and we flipped 
it at the rate of ten gallons the hour ; and when the squall 
came (for it’s squally off there by Patagonia), and all hands 
— visitors and all — were called to reef topsails, we were so 
top-heavy that we had to swing each other aloft in bow- 
lines ; and we ignorantly furled the skirts of our jackets into 
the sails, so that we hung there, reefed fast in the howling 
gale, a warning example to all drunken tars. However, 
the masts did not go overboard ; and by-and-by we scram- 
bled down, so sober, that we had to pass the flip again, 
though the savage salt spray bursting down the forecastle 
scuttle, rather too much diluted and pickled it to my taste. 

The beef was fine — tough, hut with body in it. They 
said it was hull-beef ; others, that it was dromedary beef ; 
but I do not know, for certain, how that was. They had 
dumplings too ; small, but substantial, symmetrically 
globular, and indestructible dumplings. I fancied that 
you could feel them, and roll them about in you after they 
were swallowed. If you stooped over too far forward, you 
risked their pitching out of you like billiard-balls. The . : 
bread — hut that couldn’t be helped ; besides, it was an anti- 
scorbutic ; in short, the bread contained the only fresh fare 
they had. But the forecastle was not very light, and it 
was very easy to step over into a dark corner when you 
ate it. But all in all, taking her from truck to helm, con- 
sidering the dimensions of the cook’s boilers, including his 
own live parchment boilers ; fore and aft, I say, the Samuel 
Enderby was a jolly ship ; of good fare and plenty ; fine flip 
and strong ; crack fellows all, and capital from boot heels ; 
to hat-hand. 

But why was it, think ye, that the Samuel Enderby, and 
some other English whalers I know of — not all though — 
were such famous, hospitable ships ; that passed round the 
beef, and the bread, and the can, and the joke ; and were not 
soon weary of eating, and drinking, and laughing ? I will 
tell you. The abounding good cheer of these Engli sh whalers 
is matter for historical research. Nor have I been at all 
sparing of historical whale research, when it has seemed 
needed. 

The English were preceded in the whale fishery by the 
Hollanders, Zealanders and Danes ; from whom they de- 
rived many terms still extant in the fishery ; and what is 
yet more, their fat old fashions, touching plenty to eat and 
drink. For, as a general thing, the English merchant-ship 


MOBY DICK. 


419 


scrimps her crew ; but not so the English whaler. Hence, 
in the English, this thing of whaling good cheer is not normal 
and natural, but incidental and particular ; and, therefore, 
must have some special origin, which is here pointed out, 
and will be still further elucidated. 

During my researches in the Leviathanic histories, I 
stumbled upon an ancient Dutch volume, which, by the 
musty whaling smell of it, I knew must be about whalers. 
The title was, “ Dan Coopman,” wherefore I concluded that 
this must be the invaluable memoirs of some Amsterdam 
cooper in the fishery, as every whale ship must carry its 
cooper. I was reinforced in this opinion by seeing that it 
was the production of one “ Fitz Swackhammer.” But my 
friend Dr. Snodhead, a very learned man, professor of Low 
Dutch and High German in the college of Santa Claus and 
St. Pott’s, to whom I handed the work for translation, giv- 
ing him a box of sperm candles for his trouble — this same 
Dr. Snodhead, so soon as he spied the book, assured me 
that “ Dan Coopman ” did not mean “ The Cooper,” but 
“ The Merchant.” In short, this ancient and learned Low 
Dutch book treated of the commerce of Holland ; and, 
among other subjects, contained a very interesting account 
of its whale fishery. And in this chapter it was, headed 
“ Smeer,” or “ Fat,” that I found a long detailed list of the 
outfits for the larders and cellars of 180 sail of Dutch whale- 
men ; from which list, as translated by Dr. Snodhead, I 
transcribed the following : 

400.000 lbs. of beef. 

60.000 lbs. Friesland pork. 

150.000 lbs. of stock fish. 

550.000 lbs. of biscuit. 

72.000 lbs. of soft bread. 

2,800 firkins of butter. 

20.000 lbs. Texel & Leyden cheese. 

144.000 lbs. cheese (probably an inferior article). 

550 ankers of Geneva. 

10,800 barrels of beer. 

Most statistical tables are parchingly dry in the reading ; not 
so in the present case, however, where the reader is flooded 
with whole pipes, barrels, quarts, and gills of good gin and 
good cheer. 

At the time, I devoted three days to the studious digest- 
ing of all this beer, beef, and bread, during which many 
profound thoughts were incidentally suggested to me, cap- 


420 


MOBY DICK. 


able of a transcendental and Platonic application; and, 
furthermore, I compiled supplementary tables of my own, 
touching the probable quantity of stock-fish, etc., consumed 
by every Low Dutch harpooner in that ancient Greenland 
and Spitzbergen whale fishery. In the first place, the 
amount of butter, and Texel and Leyden cheese consumed, 
seems amazing. I impute it, though, to their naturally 
unctuous natures, being rendered still more unctuous by 
the nature of their vocation, and especially by their pursu- 
ing their game in those frigid Polar Seas, on the very coasts 
of that Esquimaux country where the convivial natives 
pledge each other in bumpers /f train oil. 

The quantity of beer, too, is very large, 10,800 barrels. 
Now, as those polar fisheries could only be prosecuted in 
the short summer of that climate, so that the whole cruise 
of one of these Dutch whalemen, including the short voyage 
to and from the Spitzbergen sea, did not much exceed three 
months, say, and reckoning 30 men to each of their fleet of 
180 sail, we have 5,400 Low Dutch seamen in all; therefore, 
I say, we have precisely two barrels of beer per man, for a 
twelve weeks’ allowance, exclusive of his fair proportion of 
that 550 ankers of gin. Now, whether these gin and beer 
harpooners, so fuddled as one might fancy them to have 
been, were the right sort of men to stand up in a boat’s 
head, and take good aim at flying whales ; this would seem 
somewhat improbable. Yet they did aim at them, and hit 
them too. But this was very far North, be it remembered, 
where beer agrees well with the constitution ; upon the 
Equator, in our southern fishery, beer would be apt to make 
the harpooner sleepy at the mast-head and boozy in his 
boat; and grievous loss might ensue to Nantucket and 
New Bedford. 

But no more ; enough has been said to show that the old 
Dutch whalers of two or three centuries ago were high 
livers ; and that the English whalers have not neglected so 
excellent an example. For, say they, when cruising in an 
empty ship, if you can get nothing better out of the world, 
get a good dinner out of it, at least. And this empties the 
decanter. 


MOBY DICK. 


421 


CHAPTER CII. 

A BOWER IX THE ARSACIDES. 

Hitherto, in descriptively treating of the Sperm Whale, 

I have chiefly dwelt upon the marvels of his outer aspect ; 
or separately and in detail upon some few interior structural 
features. But to a large and thorough sweeping compre- 
hension of him, it behooves me now to unbutton him still 
further, and untagging the # points of his hose, unbuckling 
his garters, and casting loose the hooks and the eyes of the 
joints of his innermost bones, set him before you in his 
ultimatum ; that is to say, in his unconditional skeleton. 

But how now, Ishmael? How is it, that you, a mere 
oarsman in the fishery, pretend to know aught about the 
subterranean parts of the whale ? Did erudite Stubb, 
mounted upon your capstan, deliver lectures on the anatomy 
of the Cetacea; and by help of the windlass, hold up a 
specimen rib for exhibition? Explain thyself, Ishmael? 
Can you land a full-grown whale on your deck for examina- 
tion, as a cook dishes a roast-pig ? Surely not. A veritable 
witness have you hitherto been, Ishmael ; but have a care 
how you seize the privilege of Jonah alone; the privilege of 
discoursing upon the joists and beams ; the rafters, ridge- 
pole, sleepers, and under-pinnings, making up the frame- 
work of leviathan; and belike of the tallow- vats, dairy- 
rooms, butteries, and cheeseries in his bowels. 

I confess, that since Jonah, few whalemen have penetrated 
very far beneath the skin of the adult whale ; nevertheless, 

I have been blessed with an opportunity to dissect him in 
miniature. In a ship I belonged to, a small cub Sperm 
Whale was once bodily hoisted to the deck for his poke or * 
bag, to make sheaths for the barbs of the harpoons, and for 
the heads of the lances. Think you I let that chance go, 
without using my boat-hatchet and jack-knife, and break- 
ing the seal and reading all the contents of that young 
cub? 

And as for my exact knowledge of the bones of the levia- 
than in their gigantic, full grown development, for that 
rare knowledge I am indebted to my . late royal friend Tran- 




422 


MOBY LICK. 


quo, king of Tranque, one of the Arsacides. For being at 
Tranque, years ago, when attached to the trading-ship Dey 
of Algiers, I was invited to spend part of the Arsacidean 
holidays with the lord of Tranque, at his retired palm villa 
at Pupella ; a sea-side glen not very far distant from what 
our sailors called Bamboo- Town, his capital. 

Among many other fine qualities, my royal friend Tranquo, 
being gifted with a devout love for all matters of barbaric 
vertti, had brought together in Pupella whatever rare things 
the more ingenious of his people could invent ; chiefly carved 
woods of wonderful devices, chiselled shells, inlaid spears, 
costly paddles, aromatic canoes ; and all these distributed 
among whatever natural wonders, the wonder-freighted, 
tribute-rendering waves has cast upon his shores. 

Chief among these latter was a great Sperm Whale, which, 
after an unusually long raging gale, had been found dead 
and stranded, with his head against a cocoa-nut tree, whose 
plumage-like, tufted droopings seemed his verdant jet. 
When the vast body had at last been stripped of its fathom- 
deep enfoldings, and the bones become dust dry in the sun, 
then the skeleton was carefully transported up the Pupella 
glen, where a grand temple of lordly palms now sheltered it. 

The ribs were hung with trophies ; the vertebrae were 
carved with Arsacidean annals, in strange hieroglyphics ; in 
the skull, the priests kept up an unextinguished aromatic 
flame, so that the mystic head again sent forth its vapoury 
spout ; while, suspended from a bough, the terrific lower 
jaw vibrated over all the devotees, like the hair-hung sword 
that so affrighted Damocles. 

It was a wondrous sight. The wood was green as mosses 
of the Icy Glen ; the trees stood high and haughty, feeling 
their living sap ; the industrious earth beneath was as a 
weaver’s loom, with a gorgeous carpet on it, whereof the 
ground- vine tendrils formed the warp and woof, and the 
living flowers the figures. All the trees, with all their laden 
branches ; all the shrubs, and ferns, and grasses ; the 
message-carrying air; all these unceasingly were active. 
Through the lacings of the leaves, the great sun seemed a 
flying shuttle weaving the unwearied verdure. Oh, busy 
weaver ! unseen weaver ! — pause ! — one word ! — whither 
flows the fabric ? what palace may it deck ! wherefore all 
these ceaseless toilings ? Speak, weaver ! — stay thy hand ! 
— but one single word with thee ! N ay — the shuttle flies — the 
figures float from forth the loom ; the freshet-rushing carpet 


MOBY DICK. 


423 


forever slides away. The weaver-god, he weaves ; and by 
that weaving is he deafened, that he hears no mortal voice ; 
and by that humming, we too, who look on the loom are 
deafened; and only when we escape it shall we hear the 
thousand voices that speak through it. For even so it is in 
all material factories. The spoken words that are inaudi- 
ble among the flying spindles ; those same words are plainly 
heard without the walls, bursting from the opened case- 
ments. Thereby have villainies been detected. Ah, mortal ! 
then, be heedful ; for so, in all this din of the great world’s 
loom, thy subtlest thinkings may be overheard afar. 

Now, amid the green, life-restless loom of that Arsaci- 
dean wood, the great, white, worshipped skeleton lay loung- 
ing — a gigantic idler! Yet, as the ever-woven verdant 
warp and woof intermixed and hummed around him, the 
mighty idler seemed the cunning weaver; himself all 
woven over with the vines ; every month assuming greener, 
fresher verdure ; but himself a skeleton. Life folded Death; 
Death trellised Life ; the grim god wived with youthful 
Life, and begat him curly-headed glories. 

Now, when with royal Tranquo I visited this wondrous 
whale, and saw the skull an altar, and the artificial smoke 
ascending from where the real jet had issued, I marvelled 
that the king should regard a chapel as an object of verth. 
He laughed. But more I marvelled that the priests should 
swear that smoky jet of his was genuine. To and fro I 
paced before this skeleton — brushed the vines aside — broke 
through the ribs — and with a ball of Arsacidean twine, 
wandered, eddied long amid its many winding, shaded 
colonnades and arbours. But soon my line was out ; and 
following it back, T emerged from the opening where I 
entered. I saw no living thing within ; naught was there 
but bones. 

Cutting me a green measuring-rod, I once more dived 
within the skeleton. From their arrow-slit in the skull, 
the priests perceived me taking the altitude of the final rib. 
“How now!” they shouted; “Dar’st thou measure this 
our god! That’s for us.” “Aye, priests — well, how long 
do ye make him, then ? ” But hereupon a fierce contest 
rose among them, concerning feet and inches ; they cracked 
each other’s sconces with their yard-sticks— the great skull 
echoed— and seizing that lucky chance, I quickly concluded 
my own admeasurements. 

These admeasurements I now propose to set before you. 


424 


MOB Y DICK. 


But first, be it recorded, that, in this matter, I am not free 
to utter any fancied measurement I please. Because there 
are skeleton authorities you can refer to, to test my ac- 
curacy. There is a Leviathanic Museum, they tell me, in 
Hull, England, one of the whaling ports of that country, where 
they have some fine specimens of fin-backs and other whales. 
Likewise, I have heard that in the museum of Manchester, 
in New Hampshire, they have what the proprietors call 
“ the only perfect specimen of a Greenland or Right Whale 
in the United States.” Moreover, at a place in Yorkshire, 
England, Burton Constable by name, a certain Sir Clifford 
Constable has in his possession the skeleton of a Sperm 
Whale, but of moderate size, by no means of the full-grown 
magnitude of my friend King Tranquo’s. 

In both cases, the stranded whales to which these two 
skeletons belonged, were originally claimed by their pro- 
prietors upon similar grounds. King Tranquo seizing his 
because he wanted it ; and Sir Clifford, because he was lord 
of the seignories of those parts. Sir Clifford’s whale has 
been articulated throughout ; so that, like a great chest of 
drawers, you can open and shut him, in all his bony cav- 
ities — spread out his ribs like a gigantic fan — and swing all 
day upon his lower jaw. Locks are to be put upon some of 
his trap-doors and shutters; and a footman will show 
round future visitors with a bunch of keys at his side. Sir 
Clifford thinks of charging twopence for a peep at the 
whispering gallery in the spinal column ; threepence to hear 
the echo in the hollow of his cerebellum ; and sixpence for 
the unrivalled view from his forehead. 

The skeleton dimensions I shall now proceed to set down 
are copied verbatim from my right arm, where I had them 
tattooed ; as in my wild wanderings at that period, there 
was no other secure way of preserving such valuable 
statistics. But as I was crowded for space, and wished the 
other parts of my body to remain a blank page for a poem 
I was then composing — at least, what untattooed parts 
might remain — I did not trouble myself with the odd 
inches ; nor, indeed, should inches at all enter into a con- 
genial admeasurement of the whale. 


MOBY LICK. 


425 


CHAPTER Cm. 

MEASUREMENT OF THE WHALE’S SKELETON. 

In the first place, I wish to lay before you a particular, 
plain statement, touching the living bulk of this leviathan, 
whose skeleton we are briefly to exhibit. Such a statement 
may prove useful here. 

According to a careful calculation I have made, and 
which I partly base upon Captain Scoresby’s estimate, of 
seventy tons for the largest size Greenland whale of sixty 
feet in length ; according to my careful calculation, I say, a 
Sperm Whale of the largest magnitude, between eighty-five 
and ninety feet in length, and something less than forty 
feet in its fullest circumference, such a whale will weigh 
at least ninety tons ; so that, reckoning thirteen men to 
a ton, he would considerably outweigh the combined 
population of a whole village of one thousand one hundred 
inhabitants. 

Think you not then that brains, like yoked cattle, should 
be put to this leviathan, to make him at all budge to any 
landsman’s imagination ? 

Having already in various ways put before you his skull, 
spout-hole, jaw, teeth, tail, forehead, fins, and divers other 
parts, I shall now simply point out what is most interesting 
in the general bulk of his unobstructed bones. But as the 
colossal skull embraces so very large a proportion of the 
entire extent of the skeleton ; as it is by far the most 
complicated part; and as nothing is to be repeated 
concerning it in this chapter, you must not fail to carry 
it in your mind, or under your arm, as we proceed, other- 
wise you will not gain a complete notion of the general 
structure we are about to view. 

In length, the Sperm Whale’s skeleton at Tranque 
measured seventy- two feet ; so that when fully invested 
and extended in life, he must have been ninety feet long ; 
for in the whale, the skeleton loses about one fifth in length 
compared with the living body. Of this seventy-two feet, 
his skull and jaw comprised some twenty feet; leaving 


426 


MOBY DICK. 


some fifty feet of plain back-bone. Attached to this back- 
bone, for something less than a third of its length, was the 
mighty circular basket of ribs which once enclosed his 
vitals. 

To me this vast ivory-ribbed chest, with the long, 
unrelieved spine, extending far away from it in a straight 
line, not a little resembled the hull of a great ship new-laid 
upon the stocks, when only some twenty of her naked bow- 
ribs are inserted, and the keel is otherwise, for the time, 
but a long, disconnected timber. 

The ribs were ten on a side. The first, to begin from 
the neck, was nearly six feet long ; the second, third, and 
fourth were each successively longer, till you came to the 
climax of the fifth, or one of the middle ribs, which 
measured eight feet and some inches. From that part, 
the remaining ribs diminished, till the tenth and last only 
spanned five feet and some inches. In general thickness 
they all bore a seemly correspondence to their length. 
The middle ribs were the most arched. In some of the 
Arsacides they are used for beams whereon to lay foot- 
path bridges over small streams. 

In considering these ribs, I could not but be struck 
anew with the circumstance, so variously repeated in this 
book, that the skeleton of the whale is by no means the 
mould of his invested form. The largest of the Tranque 
ribs, one of the middle ones, occupied that part of the 
fish which, in fife, is greatest in depth. Now, the greatest 
depth of the invested body of this particular whale 
must have been at least sixteen feet ; whereas, the cor- 
responding rib measured but little more than eight feet. 
So that this rib only conveyed half of the true notion of the 
living magnitude of that part. Besides, for some way, 
where I now saw but a naked spine, all that had been once 
wrapped round with tons of added bulk in flesh, muscle, 
blood, and bowels. Still more, for the ample fins, I here 
saw but a few disordered joints ; and in place of the weighty 
and majestic, but boneless flukes, an utter blank ! 

How vain and foolish, then, thought I, for timid untravelled 
man to try to comprehend aright this wondrous whale, by 
merely poring over his dead attenuated skeleton, stretched 
in this peaceful wood. No. Only in the heart of quickest 
perils ; only when within the eddyings of his angry flukes ; 
only on the profound unbounded sea, can the fully invested 
whale be truly and livingly found out. 


MOBY DICK. 


427 


But the spine. For that, the best way we can consider 
it is, with a crane, to pile its hones high up on end. No 
speedy enterprise. But now it’s done, it looks much like 
Pompey’s Pillar. 

There are forty and odd vertebrae in all, which in the 
skeleton are not locked together. They mostly lie like the 
great knobbed blocks on a Gothic spire, forming solid 
courses of heavy masonry. The largest, a middle one, is in 
width something less than three feet, and in depth more 
than four. The smallest, where the spine tapers away 
into the tail, is only two inches in width, and looks some- 
thing like a white billiard-hall. I was told that there were 
still smaller ones, but they had been lost by some little 
cannibal urchins, the priest’s children, who had stolen them 
to play marbles with. Thus we see how that the spine of 
even the hugest of living things tapers off at last into 
simple child’s play. 


CHAPTER CIV. 

THE FOSSIL WHALE. 

From his mighty bulk the whale affords a most congenial 
theme whereon to enlarge, amplify, and generally expatiate. 
Would you, you could not compress him. By good rights 
he should only be treated of in imperial folio. Not to tell 
over again his furlongs from spiracle to tail, and the yards 
he measures about the waist ; only think of the gigantic in- 
volutions of his intestines, where they lie in him like great 
cables and hawsers coiled away in the subterranean orlop- 
deck of a line-of-battle-ship. 

Since I have undertaken to manhandle this Leviathan, it 
behooves me to approve myself omnisciently exhaustive in 
the enterprise ; not overlooking the minutest seminal germs 
of his blood, and spinning him out to the uttermost coil of 
his bowels. Having already described him in most of his 
present habitatory and anatomical peculiarities, it now re- 
mains to magnify him in an archaeological, fossiliferous, 
and antediluvian point of view. Applied to any other crea- 
ture than the Leviathan — to an ant or a flea — such portly 
terms might justly be deemed unwarrantably grandiloquent. 


428 


MOBY DICK. 


But when Leviathan is the text, the case is altered. Fain 
am I to stagger to this emprise under the weightiest words 
of the dictionary. And here be it said, that whenever it has 
been convenient to consult one in the course of these dis- 
sertations, I have invariably used a huge quarto edition of 
Johnson, expressly purchased for that purpose ; because 
that famous lexicographer’s uncommon personal bulk more 
fitted him to compile a lexicon to be used by a whale 
author like me. 

One often hears of writers that rise and swell with their 
subject, though it may seem but an ordinary one. How, 
then, with me, writing of this Leviathan ? Unconsciously 
my chirography expands into placard capitals. Give me a 
condor’s quill ! Give me Vesuvius’ crater for an inkstand ! 
Friends, hold my arms ! For in the mere act of penning 
my thoughts of this Leviathan, they weary me, and make 
me faint with their outreaching comprehensiveness of sweep, 
as if to include the whole circle of the sciences, and all the 
generations of whales, and men, and mastodons, past, pres- 
ent, and to come, with all the revolving panoramas of 
empire on earth, and throughout the whole universe, not 
excluding its suburbs. Such, and so magnifying, is the 
virtue of a large and liberal theme ! We expand to its bulk. 
To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty 
theme. No great and enduring volume can ever be written 
on the flea, though many there be who have tried it. 

Ere entering upon the subject of Fossil Whales, I present 
my credentials as a geologist, by stating that in my miscel- 
laneous time I have been a stone-mason, and also a great 
digger of ditches, canals and wells, wine-vaults, cellars, and 
cisterns of all sorts. Likewise, by way of preliminary, I 
desire to remind the reader, that while in the earlier geolo- 
gical strata there are found the fossils of monsters now 
almost completely extinct ; the subsequent relics discovered 
in what are called the Tertiary formations seem the con- 
necting, or at any rate intercepted links, between the anti- 
chronical creatures, and those whose remote posterity are 
said to have entered the Ark; all the Fossils Whales 
hitherto discovered belong to the Tertiary period, which is 
the last preceding the superficial formations. And though 
none of them precisely answer to any known species of the 
present time, they are yet sufficiently akin to them in 
general respects, to justify their taking rank as Cetacean 
fossils. 


MOBY DICK. 


429 


Detached broken fossils of pre-adamite whales, frag- 
ments of their bones and skeletons, have within thirty 
years past, at various intervals, been found at the base of 
the Alps, in Lombardy, in France, in England, in Scotland, 
and in the States of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. 
Among the more curious of such remains is part of a skull, 
which in the year 1779 was disinterred in the Rue Dau- 
phine in Paris, a short street opening almost directly upon 
the palace of the Tuileries ; and bones disinterred in exca- 
vating the great docks of Antwerp, in Napoleon’s time. 
Cuvier pronounced these fragments to have belonged to 
some utterly unknown Leviathanic species. 

But by far the most wonderful of all cetacean relics was 
the almost complete vast skeleton of an extinct monster, 
found in the year 1842, on the plantation of Judge Creagh, 
in Alabama. The awe-stricken credulous slaves in the 
vicinity took it for the bones of one of the fallen angels. 
The Alabama doctors declared it a huge reptile, and be- 
stowed upon it the name of Basilosaurus. But some speci- 
men bones of it being taken across the sea to Owen, the 
English anatomist, it turned out that this alleged reptile 
was a whale, though of a departed species. A significant 
illustration of the fact, again and again repeated in this 
book, that the skeleton of the whale furnishes but little 
clue to the shape of his fully invested body. So Owen 
rechristened the monster Zeuglodon ; and in his paper 
read before the London Geological Society, pronounced 
it, in substance, one of the most extraordinary creatures 
which the mutations of the globe have blotted out of 
existence. 

When I stand among these mighty Leviathan skel- 
etons, skulls, tusks, jaws, ribs, and vertebrge, all character- 
ised by partial resemblances to the existing breeds of sea- 
monsters ; but at the same time bearing on the other hand 
similar affinities to the annihilated antichronical Levia- 
thans, their incalculable seniors ; I am, by a flood, borne 
back to that wondrous period, ere time itself can be said to 
have begun ; for time began with man. Here Saturn’s grey 
chaos rolls over me, and I obtain dim, shuddering glimpses 
into those Polar eternities ; when wedged bastions of ice 
pressed hard upon what are now the Tropics ; and in all 
the 25,000 miles of this world’s circumference, not an inhab- 
itable hand’s breadth of land was visible. Then the whole 
world was the whale’s ; and, king of creation, he left his 


430 


MOBY DICK. 


wake along the present lines of the Andes and the IJim- 
malayas. Who can show a pedigree like Leviathan ? Ahab’s 
harpoon had shed older blood than the Pharaoh’s. Methu- 
selah seems a school-boy. I look round to shake hands 
with Shem. I am horror-struck at this antemosaic, un- 
sourced existence of the unspeakable terrors of the whale, 
which, having been before all time, must need exist after 
all humane ages are over. 

But not alone has this Leviathan left his pre-adamite 
traces in the stereotype plates of nature, and in limestone 
and marl bequeathed his ancient bust ; but upon Egyptian 
tablets, whose antiquity seems to claim for them an almost 
fossiliferous character, we find the unmistakable print of 
his fin. In an apartment of the great temple of Denderah, 
some fifty years ago, there was discovered upon the granite 
ceiling a sculptured and painted planisphere, abounding in 
centaurs, griffins, and dolphins, similar to the grotesque 
figures on the celestial globe of the moderns. Gliding 
among them, old Leviathan swam as of yore ; was there 
swimming in that planisphere, centuries before Solomon 
was cradled. 

Nor must there be omitted another strange attestation of 
the antiquity of the whale, in his own osseous post-diluvian 
reality, as set down by the venerable John Leo, the old 
Barbary traveller. 

“Not far from the Sea-side, they have a Temple, the 
Rafters and Beams of which are made of Whale-Bones ; for 
Whales of a monstrous size are oftentimes cast up dead 
upon that shore. The Common People imagine, that by a 
secret Power bestowed by God upon the temple, no Whale 
can pass it without immediate death. But the truth of the 
Matter is, that on either side of the Temple, there are 
Rocks that shoot two Miles into the Sea, and wound the 
Whales when they light upon ’em. They keep a Whale’s 
Rib of an incredible length for a Miracle, which lying upon 
the Ground with its convex part uppermost, makes an Arch, 
the Head of which cannot be reached by a Man upon a 
Camel’s Back. This Rib (says John Leo) is said to have 
layn there a hundred Years before I saw it. Their His- 
torians affirm, that a Prophet who prophesy’d of Mahomet, 
came from this Temple, and some do not stand to assert, 
that the Prophet Jonas was cast forth by the Whale at the 
Base of the Temple.” 


MOBY DICK. 


431 


In this Afric Temple of the Whale I leave you, reader, 
and if you be an Nantucketer, and a Whaleman, you will 
silently worship there. 


CHAPTER CY. 

DOES THE WHALE’S MAGNITUDE DIMINISH? WILL HE PERISH? 

Inasmuch, then, as this Leviathan comes floundering 
down upon us from the head- waters of the Eternities, it 
may be fitly inquired, whether, in the long course of his 
generations, he has not degenerated from the original bulk 
of his sires. 

But upon investigation we find, that not only are the 
whales of the present day superior in magnitude to those 
whose fossil remains are found in the Tertiary system (em- 
bracing distinct geological period prior to man), but of the 
whales found in that Tertiary system, those belonging 
to its latter formations exceed in size those of its earlier 
ones. 

Of all the pre-adamite whales yet exhumed, by far the 
largest is the Alabama one mentioned in the last chapter, 
and that was less than seventy feet in length in the skeleton. 
Whereas, we have already seen, that the tape-measure gives 
seventy-two feet for the skeleton of a large-sized modern 
'whale. And I have heard, on whalemen’s authority, that 
Sperm Whales have been captured near a hundred feet long 
at the time of capture. 

But may it not be, that while the whales of the present 
hour are an advance in magnitude upon those of all previous 
geological periods : may it not be, that since Adam’s time 
they have degenerated ? 

Assuredly, we must conclude so, if we are to credit the 
accounts of such gentlemen as Pliny, and the ancient nat- 
uralists generally. For Pliny tells us of whales that em- 
braced acres of living hulk, and Aldrovandus of others which 
measured eight hundred feet in length — Rope Walks and 
Thames Tunnels of Whales ! And even in the days of Banks 
and Solander, Cook’s naturalists, we find a Danish member 
of the Academy of Sciences setting down certain Iceland 


432 


MOBY DICK. 


Whales (reydan-siskur, or Wrinkled Bellies) at one hundred 
and twenty yards ; that is, three hundred and sixty feet. 
And Lacepede, the French naturalist, in his elaborate his- 
tory of whales, in the very beginning of his work (page 3), 
sets down the Right Whale at one hundred metres, three 
hundred and twenty-eight feet. And this work was pub- 
lished so late as A. D. 1825. _ j 

But will any whaleman believe these stories ? No. The 
whale of to-day is as big as his ancestors in Pliny’s time. 
And if ever I go where Pliny is, I, a \vhaleman (more than 
he was), will make bold to tell him so. Because I cannot 
understand how it is, that while the Egyptian mummies 
that were buried thousands of years before even Pliny was 
born, do not measure so much in their coffins as a modern 
Kentuckian in his socks ; and while the cattle and other 
animals sculptured on the oldest Egyptian and Nineveh 
tablets, by the relative proportions in which they are drawn, 
just as plainly prove that the high-bred, stall-fed, prize 
cattle of Smithfleld, not only equal, but far exceed in mag- 
nitude the fattest of Pharaoh’s fat kine ; in the face of all 
this, I will not admit that of all animals the whale alone 
should have degenerated. 

But still another inquiry remains ; one often agitated by 
the more recondite Nantucketers. Whether owing to the 
almost omniscient look-outs at the mast-heads of the whale- 
ships, now penetrating even through Behring’s Strait, and 
into the remotest secret drawers and lockers of the world ; 
and the thousand harpoons and lances darted along all con- 
tinental coasts ; the moot point is, whether Leviathan can 
long endure so wide a chase, and so remorseless a havoc ; 
whether he must not at last be exterminated from the waters, 
and the last whale, like the last man, smoke his last pipe, 
and then himself evaporate in the final puff. 

Comparing the humped herds of whales with the humped 
herds of buffalo, which, not forty years ago, overspread by 
tens of thousands the prairies of Illinois and Missouri, and 
shook their iron manes and scowled with their thunder- 
clotted brows upon the sites of populous river-capitals, 
where now the polite broker sells you land at a dollar an 
inch ; in such a comparison an irresistible argument would 
seem furnished, to show that the hunted whale cannot now 
escape speedy extinction. 

But you must look at this matter in every light. Though 


MOBY DICK. 


433 


so short a period ago — not a good lifetime — the census of 
the buffalo in Illinois exceeded the census of men now in 
London, and though at the present day not one horn or hoof 
of them remains in all that region ; and though the cause 
of this wondrous extermination was the spear of man ; yet 
the far different nature of the whale-hunt peremptorily for- 
bids so inglorious an end to the Leviathan. Forty men in 
one ship hunting the Sperm Whale for forty-eight months 
think they have done extremely well, and thank God, if at 
last they carry home the oil of forty fish. Whereas, in the 
days of the old Canadian and Indian hunters and trappers 
of the West, when tho far west (in whose sunset suns still 
rise) was a wilderness and a virgin, the same number of 
moccasined men, for the same number of months, mounted 
on horses instead of sailing in ships, would have slain not 
forty, but forty thousand and more buffaloes ; a fact that, 
if need were, could be statistically stated. 

Nor, considered aright, does it seem any argument in 
favour of the gradual extinction of the Sperm Whale, for ex- 
ample, that in former years (the latter part of the last cen- 
tury, say) these Leviathans, in small pods, were encoun- 
tered much oftener than at present, and, in consequence, the 
voyages were not so prolonged, and were also much more 
remunerative. Because, as has been elsewhere noticed, 
those whales, influenced by some views to safety, now 
swim the seas in immense caravans, so that to a large 
degree the scattered solitaries, yokes, and pods, and schools 
of other days are now aggregated into vast but widely 
separated, unfrequent armies. That is all. And equally 
fallacious seems the conceit, that because the so-called • 
whale-bone whalers no longer haunt many grounds in 
former years abounding with them, hence that species also 
is declining. For they are only being driven from promon- 
tory to cape ; and if one coast is no longer enlivened with 
their jets, then, be sure, some other and remoter strand 
has been very recently startled by the unfamiliar spec- 
tacle. 

Furthermore: concerning these last mentioned Levia- 
thans, they have two firm fortresses, which, in all human 
probability, will for ever remain impregnable. And as 
upon the invasion of their valleys, the frosty Swiss have 
retreated to their mountains ; so, hunted from the savannas 
and glades of the middle seas, the whale-bone whales can 
at last resort to their Polar citadels, and diving under the 

28 


434 


MOBY DICK. 


ultimate glassy barriers and walls there, come up among 
icy fields and floes ; and in a charmed circle of everlasting 
December, bid defiance to all pursuit from man. 

But as perhaps fifty of these whale-bone whales are har- 
pooned for one cachalot, some philosophers of the forecas- j 
tie have concluded that this positive havoc has already 
very seriously diminished their battalions. But though for 
some time past a number of these whales, not less than 
13,000, have been annually slain on the nor’- west coast by 
the Americans alone ; yet there are considerations which 
render even this circumstance of little or no account as an 
opposing argument in this matter. 

Natural as it is to be somewhat incredulous concerning 
the populousness of the more enormous creatures of the 
globe, yet what shall we say to Harto, the historian of Goa, 
when he tells us that at one hunting the King of Siam 
took 4,000 elephants ; that in those regions elephants are 
numerous as droves of cattle in the temperate climes. And 
there seems no reason to doubt that if these elephants, , 
which have now been hunted for thousands of years, by 
Semiramis, by Porus, by Hannibal, and by all the succes- j 
sive monarclis of the East — if they still survive there in 
great numbers, much more may the great whale outlast all 
hunting, since he has a pasture to expatiate in, which is 
precisely twice as large as all Asia, both Americas, Europe 
and Africa, New Holland, and all the Isles of the sea com- 
bined. 

Moreover : we are to consider, that from the presumed 
great longevity of whales, their probably attaining the age i 
of a century and more, therefore at any one period of time, 
several distinct adult generations must be contemporary. 
And what that is, we may soon gain some idea of, by imag- - 
ining all the grave-yards, cemeteries, and family vaults of 
creation yielding up the live bodies of all the men, women, 
and children who were alive seventy-five years ago ; and 
adding this countless host to the present human population t 
of the globe. 

Wherefore, for all these things, we account the whale 
immortal in his species, however perishable in his individ- 
uality. He swam the seas before the continents broke 
water ; he once swam over the site of the Tuileries, and 
Windsor Castle, and the Kremlin. In Noah’s flood he 
despised Noah’s Ark ; and if ever the world is to be again 
flooded, like the Netherlands, to kill off its rats, then" the 


MOB Y DICK. 


435 


eternal wliale will still survive, and rearing upon the top- 
most crest of the equatorial flood, spout his frothed defiance 
to the skies. 


CHAPTER CVL 
ahab’s leg. 

The precipitating manner in which Captain Ahab had 
quitted the Samuel Enderby of London, had not been un- 
attended with some small violence to his own person. He 
had alighted with such energy upon a thwart of his boat 
that his ivory leg had received a half-splintering shock. 
And when after gaining his own deck, and his own pivot- 
hole there, he so vehemently wheeled round with an ur- 
gent command to the steersman (it was, as ever, something 
about his not steering inflexibly enough) ; then, the already 
shaken ivory received such an additional twist and wrench 
that though it still remained entire, and to all appearances 
lusty, yet Ahab did not deem it entirely trustworthy. 

And, indeed, it seemed small matter for wonder, that for 
all his pervading, mad recklessness, Ahab did at times give 
careful heed to the condition of that dead bone upon which 
he partly stood. For it had not been very long prior to 
the Pequod’s sailing from Nantucket, that he had been 
found one night lying prone upon the ground, and insensi- 
ble ; by some unknown, and seemingly inexplicable, unim- 
aginable casualty, his ivory limb having been so violently 
displaced, that it had stake- wise smitten, and all but 
pierced his groin ; nor was it without extreme difficulty 
that the agonising wound was entirely cured. 

Nor, at the time, had it failed to enter his monomaniac 
mind, that all the anguish of that then present suffering 
was but the direct issue of a former woe ; and he too plainly 
seemed to see, that as the most poisonous reptile of the 
marsh perpetuates his kind as inevitably as the sweetest 
songster of the grove ; so, equally with every felicity, all 
miserable events do naturally beget their like. Yea, more 
than equally, thought Ahab ; since both the ancestry and 
posterity of Grief go further than the ancestry and poster- 
ity of Joy. For, not to hint of this : that it is an inference 
from certain canonic teachings, that while some natural 


43G 


MOBY DICK. 


enjoyments here shall have no children born to them for 
the other world, but, on the contrary, shall be followed by 
the joy-childlessness of all hell’s despair ; whereas, some 
guilty mortal miseries shall still fertilely beget to them- 
selves an eternally progressive progeny of griefs beyond 
the grave ; not at all to hint of this, there still seems an in- 
equality in the deeper analysis of the thing. For, thought 
Ahab, while even the highest earthly felicities ever have a 
certain unsignifying pettiness lurking in them, but at bot- 
tom, all heart-woes, a mystic significance, and, in some 
men, an archangelic grandeur ; so do their diligent trac- 
ings-out not belie the obvious deduction. To trail the gen- 
ealogies of these high mortal miseries, carries us at last 
among the sourceless primogenitures of the gods ; so that 
in the face of all the glad, hay-making suns, and soft cym- 
balling, round harvest-moons, we must needs give in to 
this : that the gods themselves are not for ever glad. The 
ineffaceable, sad birth-mark in the brow of man, is but 
the stamp of sorrow in the signers. 

Unwittingly here a secret has been divulged, which per- 
haps might more properly, in set way, have been disclosed 
before. With many other particulars concerning Ahab, 
always had it remained a mystery to some, why it was, 
that for a certain period both before and after the sailing of 
the Pequod, he had hidden himself away with such Grand- 
Lama-like exclusiveness ; and, for that one interval, sought 
speechless refuge, as it were, among the marble senate of the 
dead. Captain Peleg’s bruited reason for this thing ap- 
peared by no means adequate ; though, indeed, as touching 
all Ahab’s deeper part, every revelation partook more of 
significant darkness than of explanatory light. But, in the 
end it all came out ; this one matter did, at least. That 
direful mishap was at the bottom of his temporary recluse- 
ness. And not only this, but to that ever-contracting, 
dropping circle ashore, who, for any reason, possessed the 
privilege of a less banned approach to him ; to that timid 
circle the above hinted casualty — remaining, as it did, 
moodily unaccounted for by Ahab — invested itself with 
terrors, not entirely underived from the land of spirits and of 
wails. So that, through their zeal for him, they had all 
conspired, so far as in them lay, to muffle up the knowledge 
of this thing from others ; and hence it was, that not till a 
considerable interval had elapsed, did it transpire upon the 
Pequod’s decks. 


MOBY DICK. 


437 


But be all this as it may ; let the unseen, ambiguous 
synod in the air, or the vindictive princes and potentates 
of fire, have to do or not with earthly Ahab, yet, in this 
present matter of his leg, he took plain practical procedures ; 
— he called the carpenter. 

And when that functionary appeared before him, he 
bade him without delay set about making a new leg, and 
directed the mates to see him supplied with all the studs 
and joists of jaw-ivory (Sperm Whale) which had thus far 
been accumulated on the voyage, in order that a careful 
selection of the stoutest, clearest-grained stuff might be 
secured. This done, the carpenter received orders to have 
the leg completed that night ; and to provide all the fittings 
for it, independent cf those pertaining to the distrusted one 
in use. Moreover, the ship’s forge was ordered to be hoisted 
out of its temporary idleness in the hold ; and, to accelerate 
the affair, the blacksmith was commanded to proceed at 
once to the forging of whatever iron contrivances might be 
needed. 


CHAPTER CYII. 

THE CARPENTER. 

Seat thyself sultanically among the moons of Saturn, 
and take high abstracted man alone ; and he seems a won- 
der, a grandeur, and a woe. But from the same point, take 
mankind in mass, and for the most part, they seem a mob 
of unnecessary duplicates, both contemporary and heredi- 
tary. But most humble though he was, and far from fur- 
nishing an example of the high, humane abstraction ; the 
Pequod’s carpenter was no duplicate ; hence, he now comes 
in person on this stage. 

Like all sea-going ship carpenters, and more especially 
those belonging to whaling vessels, he was, to a certain off- 
handed, practical extent, alike experienced in numerous 
trades and callings collateral to his own ; the carpenter’s 
pursuit being the ancient and outbranching trunk of all 
those numerous handicrafts which more or less have to do 
with wood as an auxiliary material. But, besides the ap- 
plication to him of the generic remark above, this carpen- 
ter of the Pequod was singularly efficient in those thousand 


438 


MQBY DICK. 


nameless mechanical emergencies continually recurring in 
a large ship, upon a three or four years’ voyage, in uncivi- 
lized and far-distant seas. For not to speak of his readi- 
ness in ordinary duties : — repairing stove boats, sprung 
spars, reforming the shape of clumsy-bladed oars, inserting 
bull’s-eyes in the deck, or new tree-nails in the side planks, 
and other miscellaneous matters more directly pertaining 
to his special business ; he was moreover unhesitatingly 
expert in all manner of conflicting aptitudes, both useful 
and capricious. 

The one grand stage where he enacted all his various 
parts so manifold, was his vice-bench ; a long rude ponder- 
ous table furnished with several vices, of different sizes 
and both of iron and of wood. At all times except when 
whales were alongside, this bench was securely lashed 
athwartships against the rear of the Try-works. 

A belaying pin is found too large to be easily inserted 
into its hole : the carpenter claps it into one of his ever- 
ready vices, and straightway files it smaller. A lost land- 
bird of strange plumage strays on board, and is made a 
captive : out of clean shaved rods of right- whale bone, and 
cross-beams of sperm whale ivory, the carpenter makes a 
pagoda-looking cage for it. An oarsman sprains his wrist : 
the carpenter concocts a soothing lotion. Stubb longed 
for vermilion stars to be painted upon the blade of his 
every oar ; screwing each oar in his big vice of wood, the 
carpenter symmetrically supplies the constellation. A 
sailor takes a fancy to wear shark-bone ear-rings: the 
carpenter drills his ears. Another has the toothache : the 
carpenter out pincers, and clapping one hand upon his 
bench bids him be seated there ; but the poor fellow un- 
manageably winces under the unconcluded operation; 
whirling round the handle of his wooden vice, the carpenter 
signs him to clap his jaw in that, if he would have him draw 
the tooth. 

Thus, this carpenter was prepared at all points, and alike 
indifferent and without respect in all. Teeth he accounted 
bits of ivory ; heads he deemed but top-blocks ; men them- 
selves he lightly held for capstans. But while now upon 
so wide a field thus variously accomplished, and with such 
liveliness of expertness in him, too ; all this would seem to 
argue some uncommon vivacity of intelligence. But not 
precisely so. For nothing was this man more remarkable, 
than for a certain impersonal stolidity as it were ; imper- 


MOBY T)TCK. 


439 


sonal, I say ; for it so shaded off into the surrounding in- 
finite of things, that it seemed one with the general stolidity 
discernible in the whole visible world ; which while pause- 
lessly active in uncounted modes, still eternally holds its 
peace, and ignores you, though you dig foundations for 
cathedrals. Yet was this half-horrible stolidity in him, 
involving, too, as it appeared, in all-ramifying heartless- 
ness ; — yet was it oddly dashed at times, with an old, 
crutch -like, antediluvian, wheezing humorousness, not un- 
streaked now and then with a certain grizzled wittiness ; 
such as might have served to pass the time during the mid- 
night watch on the bearded forecastle of Noah’s ark. Was 
it that this old carpenter had been a life-long wanderer, 
whose much rolling, to and fro, not only had gathered no 
moss ; but what is more, had rubbed off whatever small 
outward clingings might have originally pertained to him ? 
He was a stript abstract ; an unfractioned integral ; uncom- 
promised as a new-born babe ; living without premeditated 
reference to this world or the next. You might almost say, 
that this strange uncompromisedness in him involved a 
sort of unintelligence ; for in his numerous trades, he did 
not seem to work so much by reason or by instinct, or 
simply because he had been tutored to it, or by any inter- 
mixture of all these, even or uneven ; but merely by a kind 
of deaf and dumb, spontaneous literal process. He was a 
pure manipulator ; his brain, if he had ever had one, must 
have early oozed along into the muscles of his fingers. 
He was like one of those unreasoning but still highly use- 
ful multum in parvo , Sheffield contrivances, assuming the 
exterior — though a little swelled — of a common pocket 
knife ; but containing, not only blades of various sizes, but 
also screw-drivers, cork-screws, tweezers, awls, pens, rulers, 
nail-filers, counter sinkers. So, if his superiors wanted to 
use the carpenter for a screw-driver, all they had to do 
was to open that part of him, and the screw was fast : 
or if for tweezers, take him up by the legs, and there they 
were. 

Yet, as previously hinted, this omnitooled, open-and-shut 
carpenter, was, after all, no mere machine of an automaton. 
If he did not have a common soul in him, he had a subtle 
something that somehow anomalously did its duty. What 
that was, whether essence of quicksilver, or a few drops of 
hartshorn, there is no telling. But there it was ; and there 
it had abided for now some sixty years or more. And this 




440 MOBY DICK. 

it was, this same unaccountable, cunning life-principle in 
him ; this it was, that kept him a great part of the time 
soliloquising ; hut only like an unreasoning wheel, which 
also hummingly soliloquises ; or rather, his body was a 
sentry-box and this soliloquiser on guard there, and talking i 

all the time to keep himself awake. 


i 


CHAPTER CVIII. 


AHAB AND THE CAEPENTER, 


THE DECK — FIRST NIGHT WATCH. 

( Carpenter standing before his vice-bench , and by the light of 
two lanterns busily filing the ivory joist for the leg , which 
joist is firmly fixed in the vice. Slabs of ivory , leather 
straps , pads , screws , and various tools of all sorts lying 
about the bench. Forward, the red flame of the forge is 
seen , where the blacksmith is at work.) 

Drat the file, and drat the bone ! That is hard which 
should be soft, and that is soft which should be hard. So 
we go, who file old jaws and shinbones. Let’s try another. 
Aye, now, this works better (sneezes). Halloa, this bone 
dust is (sneezes) — why it’s (sneezes) — yes it’s (sneezes) — bless 
my soul, it won’t let me speak ! This is what an old fellow 
gets now for working in dead lumber. Saw a live tree, and 
you don’t get this dust ; amputate a live bone, and you 
don’t get it (sneezes). Come, come, you old Smut, there, 
bear a hand, and let’s have that ferule and buckle-screw ; 
I’ll be ready for them presently. Lucky now (sneezes) 
there’s no knee-joint to make ; that might puzzle a little ; 
but a mere shinbone — why it’s easy as making hop-poles ; 
only I should like to put a good finish on. Time, time ; if 
I but only had the time, I could turn him out as neat a leg 
now as ever (sneezes) scraped to a lady in a parlor. Those 
buckskin legs and calves of legs I’ve seen in shop windows 
wouldn’t compare at all. They soak water, they do ; and 
of course get rheumatic, and have to be doctored (sneezes) 
with washes and lotions, just like live legs. There ; before 
I saw it off, now, I must call his old Mogulship, and see 
Whether the length will be all right ; too short, if anything, 




MOBY DICK. 441 

T guess. Ha! that’s the heel; we are in luck; here he 
comes, or it’s somebody else, that’s certain. 

Ahab ( advancing ). 

( During the ensuing scene , the carpenter continues sneezing 
at times.) 

Well, man- maker! 

Just in time, sir. If the captain pleases, I will now mark 
the length. Let me measure, sir. 

Measured for a leg! good. Well, it’s not the first time. 
About it ! There ; keep thy finger on it. This is a cogent 
vice thou hast here, carpenter ; let me feel its grip once. 
So, so ; it does pinch some. 

Oh, sir, it will break hones — beware, beware ! 

No fear ; I like a good grip ; I like to feel something in 
this slippery world that can hold, man. What’s Prometheus 
about there ? — the blacksmith, I mean — what’s he about ? 

He must be forging the buckle-screw, sir, now. 

Right. It’s a partnership ; he supplies the muscle part. 
He makes a fierce red flame there ! 

Aye, sir ; he must have the white heat for this kind of 
fine work. 

Um-m. So he must. I do deem it now a most meaning 
thing, that that old Greek, Prometheus, who made men, 
they say, should have been a blacksmith, and animated 
them with fire ; for what’s made in fire must proper- 
ly belong to fire ; and so hell’s probable. How the soot 
flies! This must he the remainder the Greek made the 
Africans of. Carpenter, when he’s through with that 
buckle, tell him to forge a pair of steel shoulder-blades ; 
there’s a pedlar aboard with a crushing pack. 

Sir? 

Hold ; while Prometheus is about it, I’ll order a complete 
man after a desirable pattern. Imprimis, fifty feet high in 
his socks ; then, chest modelled after the Thames Tunnel ; 
then, legs with roots to ’em, to stay in one place ; then, arms 
three feet through the wrist ; no heart at all, brass forehead, 
and about a quarter of an acre of fine brains ; and let me see 
— shall I order eyes to see outwards ? No, but put a sky- 
light on top of his head to illuminate inwards. There, take 
the order, and away. 

Now, what’s he speaking about, and who’s he speaking to, 
I should like to know? Shall I keep standing here ? (aside). 


442 


MOBY DICK. 


’Tis but indifferent architecture to make a blind dome ; 
here’s one. No, no, no ; I must have a lantern. 

Ho, ho ! That’s it, hey ? Here are two, sir ; one will serve 
my turn. 

What art thou thrusting that thief-catcher into my face 
for, man ? Thrusted light is worse than presented pistols. 

I thought, sir, that you spoke to carpenter. 

Carpenter ? why that’s — but no ; — a very tidy, and, I may 
say, an extremely gentlemanlike sort of business thou art in 
here, carpenter ; — or would’st thou rather work in clay? 

Sir? — Clay? clay, sir? That’s mud; we leave clay to 
ditchers, sir. 

The fellow’s impious ! What art thou sneezing about ? 

Bone is rather dusty, sir. 

Take the hint, then ; and when thou art dead, never bury 
thyself under living people’s noses. 

Sir ? — oh ! ah ! — I guess so ; — yes — oh, dear ! 

Look ye, carpenter, I dare say thou callest thyself a right 
good workmanlike workman, eh ? Well, then, will it speak 
thoroughly well for thy work, if, when I come to mount this 
leg thou makest, I shall nevertheless feel another leg in the 
same identical place with it ; that is, carpenter, my old lost 
leg ; the flesh and blood one, I mean. Canst thou not drive 
that old Adam away ? 

Truly, sir, I begin to understand somewhat now. Yes, I 
have heard something curious on that score, sir ; how that 
a dismasted man never entirely loses the feeling of his old 
spar, but it will be still pricking him at times. May I hum- 
bly ask if it be really so, sir ? 

It is, man. Look, put thy live leg here in the place wdiere 
mine once was ; so, now, here is only one distinct leg to the 
eye, yet two to the soul. Where thou feelest tingling life ; 
there, exactly there, there to a hair, do I. Is’t a riddle ? 

I should humbly call it a poser, sir. 

Hist, then. How dost thou know that some entire, living, 
thinking thing may not be invisibly and uninterpenetrat- 
ingly standing precisely where thou now standest ; aye, and 
standing there in thy spite ? In thy most solitary hours, 
then, dost thou not fear eavesdroppers ? Hold, don’t speak ! 
And if I still feel the smart of my crushed leg, though it be 
now so long dissolved ; then, why mayst not thou, carpenter, 
feel the fiery pains of hell forever, and without a body? 
Hah! 

Good Lord ! Truly, sir, if it comes to that, I must calcu- 


MOBY DICK. 


443 


late over again ; I think I didn’t carry a small figure, sir. 

Look ye, pudding-heads should never grant premises. — 
How long before the leg is done ? 

Perhaps an hour, sir. 

Bungle away at it then, and bring it to me (turns to go). 
Oh, Life ! Here I am, proud as Greek god, and yet standing 
debtor to this blockhead for a bone to stand on ! Cursed 
be that mortal inter-indebtedness which will not do away 
with ledgers. I would be free as air ; and I’m down in the 
whole world’s books. I am so rich, I could have given bid 
for bid with the wealthiest Praetorians at the auction of the 
Roman empire (which was the world’s) ; and yet I owe for 
the flesh in the tongue I brag with. By heavens ! I’ll get a 
crucible, and into it, and dissolve myself down to one small, 
compendious vertebra. So. 

carpenter (resuming his work). 

Well, well, well ! Stubb knows him best of all, and Stubb 
always says he’s queer ; says nothing but that one sufficient 
little word queer ; he’s queer, says Stubb ; he’s queer — 
queer, queer ; and keeps dinning it into Mr. Starbuck all 
the time — queer, sir — queer, queer, very' queer. And here’s 
his leg ! Y es, now that I think of it, here’s his bedfellow ! has 
a stick of whale’s jawbone for a wife ! And this is his leg ; 
he’ll stand on this. What was that now about one leg 
standing in three places, and all three places standing in one 
hell — how was that ? Oh ! I don’t wonder he looked so scorn- 
ful at me ! I am a sort of strange-thoughted sometimes, they 
say ; but that’s only hap-hazard-like. Then, a short, little 
old body like me, should never undertake to wade out into 
deep waters with tall, heron- built captains; the water 
chucks you under the chin pretty quick, and there’s a great 
cry for life-boats. And here’s the heron’s leg! long and 
slim, sure enough ! Now, for most folks one pair of legs 
lasts a lifetime, and that must be because they use them 
mercifully, as a tender-hearted old lady uses her roly-poly 
old coach-horses. But Ahab ; oh he’s a hard driver. Look, 
driven one leg to death, and spavined the other for life, and 
now wears out bone legs by the cord. Halloa, there, you 
Smut ! bear a hand there with those screws, and let’s finish 
it before the resurrection fellow comes a-calling with his 
horn for all legs, true or false, as brewery-men go round 
collecting old beer barrels, to fill ’em up again. What a leg 


444 


MOBY DICK. 


this is ! It looks like a real live leg, filed down to nothing 
but the core ; he’ll be standing on this to-morrow ; he’ll be 
taking altitudes on it. Halloa ! I almost forgot the little 
oval slate, smoothed ivory, where he figures up the latitude. 
So, so ; chisel, file, and sand-paper, now ! 


CHAPTER CIX. 

AHAB AND STARBUCK IN THE CABIN. 

According to usage they were pumping the ship next 
morning ; and lo ! no inconsiderable oil came up with the 
water; the casks below must have sprung a bad leak. 
Much concern was shown ; and Starbuck went down into 
the cabin to report this unfavourable affair.* 

Now, from the South and West the Pequod was drawing 
nigh to Formosa and the Bashee Isles, between which lies 
one of the tropical outlets from the China waters into the 
Pacific. And so Starbuck found Ahab with a general chart 
of the oriental archipelagoes spread before him ; and another 
separate one representing the long eastern coasts of the 
Japanese islands — Niphon, Mastmai, and Sikoke. With his 
snow-white new ivory leg braced against the screwed leg of 
his table, and with a long pruning-hook of a jack-knife in 
his hand, the wondrous old man, with his back to the gang- 
way door, was wrinkling his brow, and tracing his old 
courses again. 

“ Who’s there ? ” hearing the footstep at the door, but not 
turning round to it. “ On deck ! Begone ! ” 

“ Captain Ahab mistakes ; it is I. The oil in the hold is 
leaking, sir. We must up Burtons and break out.” 

“ IJp Burton and break out ? Now that we are nearing 
Japan ; heave-to here for a week to tinker a parcel of old 
hoops ? ” 

“ Either do that, sir, or waste in one day more oil than 


* In Sperm-wlialemen with any considerable quantity of oil on board, 
it is a regular semi-weekly duty to conduct a hose into the hold, and 
drench the casks with sea- water; which afterwards, at varying intervals 
is removed by the ship’s pumps. Hereby the casks are sought to be 
kept damply tight; while by the changed character of the withdrawn 
water, the mariners readily detect any serious leakage in the precious 
cargo. 


MOBY DICK. 445 

we may make good in a year. What we come twenty 
thousand miles to get is worth saving, sir.” 

“ So it is, so it is ; if we get it.” 

“ I was speaking of the oil in the hold, sir.” 

“ And I was not speaking or thinking of that at all. Be- 
gone ! Let it leak ! I’m all aleak myself. Aye ! leaks in 
leaks ! not only full of leaky casks, but those leaky casks 
are in a leaky ship ; and that’s a far worse plight than the 
Pequod’s, man. Yet I don’t stop to plug my leak ; for who 
can find it in the deep-loaded hull ; or how hope to plug it, 
even if found, in this life’s howling gale ? Starbuck ! I’ll 
not have the Burtons hoisted.” 

“ What will the owners say, sir ? ” 

“ Let the owners stand on Nantucket beach and outyell 
the Typhoons. What cares Ahab ? Owners, owners ? 
Thou art always prating to me, Starbuck, about those miserly 
owners, as if the owners were my conscience. But look ye, 
the only real owner of anything is its commander ; and hark 
ye, my conscience is in this ship’s keel. — On deck ! ” 

“Captain Ahab,” said the reddening mate, moving further 
into the cabin, with a daring so strangely respectful and 
cautious that it almost seemed not only every way seeking to 
avoid the slightest outward manifestation of itself, but within 
also seemed more than half distrustful of itself ; “ A better 
man than I might well pass over in thee what he would 
quickly enough resent in a younger man ; aye, and in a 
happier, Captain Ahab.” 

“ Devils ! Dost thou then so much as dare to critically 
think of me ? — On deck ! ” 

“ Nay, sir, not yet ; I do entreat. And I do dare, sir — to 
he forbearing ! Shall we not understand each other better 
than hitherto, Captain Ahab ? ” 

Ahab seized a loaded musket from the rack (forming part 
of most South- Sea-men’s cabin furniture), and pointing it 
towards Starbuck, exclaimed : “ There is one God that is 
Lord over the earth, and one Captain that is lord over the 
Pequod. — On deck ! ” 

For an instant in the flashing eyes of the mate, and his 
fiery cheeks, you would have almost thought that he had 
really received the blaze of the levelled tube. But, master- 
ing his emotion, he half calmly rose, and as he quitted the 
cabin, paused for an instant and said : “ Thou hast out- 
raged, not insulted me, sir ; but for that I ask thee not to 


446 


MOBY DICK. 


beware of Starbuck ; thou wouldst but laugh ; but let Ahab 
beware of Ahab ; beware of thyself, old man.” 

“ He waxes brave, but nevertheless obeys ; most careful 
bravery that ! ” murmured Ahab, as Starbuck disappeared. 
“ What’s that he said — Ahab beware of Ahab — there’s some- 
thing there ! ” Then unconsciously using the musket for a 
staff, with an iron brow he paced to and fro in the little 
cabin ; but presently the thick plaits of his forehead relaxed, 
and returning the gun to the rack, he went to the deck. 

“ Thou art but too good a fellow, Starbuck,” he said lowly 
to the mate ; then raising his voice to the crew : “ Furl the 
t’gallant-sails, and close-reef the top-sails, fore and aft; back 
the main-yarcl ; up Burton, and break out in the main-hold.” 

It were perhaps vain to surmise exactly why it was, that 
as respecting Starbuck, Ahab thus acted. It may have 
been a flash of honesty in him ; or mere prudential policy 
which, under the circumstance, imperiously forbade the 
slightest symptom of open disaffection, however transient, 
in the important chief officer of his ship. However it was, 
his orders were executed ; and the Burtons were hoisted. 


CHAPTER CX. 

QUEEQUEG IX HIS COFFIN. 

Upon searching, it was found that the casks last struck 
into the hold were perfectly sound, and that the leak must 
be further off. So, it being calm weather, they broke out 
deeper and deeper, disturbing the slumbers of the huge 
ground-tier butts ; and from that black midnight sending 
those gigantic moles into the daylight above. So deep did 
they go ; and so ancient, and corroded, and weedy the aspect 
of the lowermost puncheons, that you almost looked next 
for some mouldy corner-stone cask containing coins of Cap- 
tain Noah, with copies of the posted placards, vainly warn- 
ing the infatuated old world from the flood. Tierce after 
tierce, too, of water, and bread, and beef, and shooks of 
staves, and iron bundles of hoops, w^ere hoisted out, till at 
last the piled decks were hard to get about ; and the hollow 
hull echoed under foot, as if you were treading over empty 
catacombs, and reeled and rolled in the sea like an air- 
freighted demijohn. Top-heavy was the ship as a dinner- 


MOBY DICK. 447 

less student with all Aristotle in liis head. Well was it 
that the Typhoons did not visit them then. 

Now, at this time it was that my poor pagan companion, 
and fast bosom-friend, Queequeg, was seized with a fever, 
which brought him nigh to his endless end. 

Be it said, that in this vocation of whaling, sinecures are 
unknown; dignity and danger go hand in hand; till you 
get to be Captain, the higher you rise the harder you toil. 
So with poor Queequeg, who, as harpooneer, must not only 
face all the rage of the living whale, but — as we have else- 
where seen — mount his dead back in a rolling sea ; and 
finally descend into the gloom of the hold, and bitterly 
• sweating all day in that subterraneous confinement, reso- 
lutely manhandle the clumsiest casks and see to their 
stowage. To be short, among whalemen, the harpooners 
are the holders, so called. 

Poor Queequeg ! when the ship was about half disem- 
bowelled, you should have stooped over the hatchway, and 
peered down upon him there ; where, stripped to his woollen 
drawers, the tattooed savage was crawling about amid that 
dampness and slime, like a green spotted lizard at the bot- 
tom of a well. And a well, or an ice-house, it somehow 
proved to him, poor pagan ; where, strange to say, for all 
the heat of his sweatings, he caught a terrible chill which 
lapsed into a fever ; and at last, after some days’ suffering, 
laid him in his hammock, close to the very sill of the door 
of death. How he wasted and wasted away in those few 
long-lingering days, till there seemed but little left of him 
but his frame and tattooing. But as all else in him thinned, 
and his cheek-bones grew sharper, his eyes, nevertheless, 
seemed growing fuller and fuller ; they became of a strange 
softness of lustre; and mildly but deeply looked out at you 
there from his sickness, a wondrous testimony to that im- 
mortal health in him which could not die, or be weakened. 
And like circles on the water, which, as they grow fainter, 
expand ; so his eyes seemed rounding and rounding, like 
the rings of Eternity. An awe that cannot be named would 
steal over you as you sat by the side of this waning savage, 
and saw as strange things in his face as any beheld who 
were bystanders when Zoroaster died. For whatever is 
truly wondrous and fearful in man, never yet was put into 
words or books. And the drawing near of Death, which 
alike levels all, alike impresses all with a last revelation, 
which only an author from the dead could adequately tell. 


448 


MOBY DICK. 


So that — let us say it again — no dying Chaldee or Greek 
had higher and holier thoughts than those whose myste- 
rious shades you saw creeping over the face of poor Quee- 
queg, as he quietly lay in his swaying hammock, and the 
rolling sea seemed gently rocking him to his final rest, and 
the ocean’s invisible flood-tide lifted him higher and higher 
towards his destined heaven. 

Not a man of the crew but gave him up ; and, as for 
Queequeg himself, what he thought of his case was forcibly 
shown by a curious favour he asked. He called one to him 
in the grey morning watch, when the day was just break- 
ing, and taking his hand, said that while in Nantucket he 
had chanced to see certain little canoes of dark wood, like 
the rich war- wood of his native isle ; and upon inquiry, he 
had learned that all whalemen who died in Nantucket, 
were laid in those same dark canoes, and that the fancy 
of being so laid had much pleased him ; for it was not un- 
like the custom of his own race, who, after embalming a 
dead warrior, stretched him out in his canoe, and so left 
him to be floated away to the starry archipelagoes ; for not 
only do they believe that the stars are isles, but that far 
beyond all visible horizons, their own mild, uncontinented ' 
seas, interflow with the blue heavens ; and so form the white 
breakers of the milky way. He added, that he shuddered 
at the thought of being buried in his hammock, according 
to the usual sea-custom, tossed like something vile to the 
death-devouring sharks. No : he desired a canoe like those 
of Nantucket, all the more congenial to him, being a whale- 
man, that like a whale-boat these coffin-canoes were with- 
out a keel ; though that involved but uncertain steering, 
and much lee- way adown the dim ages. 

Now, when this strange circumstance was made known 
aft, the carpenter was at once commanded to do Queequeg’s 
bidding, whatever it might include. There was some heath- 
enish, coffin-coloured old lumber aboard, which, upon a long 
previous voyage, had been cut from the aboriginal groves 
of the Lackaday islands, and from these dark planks the I 
coffin was recommended to be made. No sooner was the 
carpenter apprised of the order, than taking his rule, he 
forthwith with all the indifferent promptitude of his char- 
acter, proceeded into the forecastle and took Queequeg’s 
measure with great accuracy, regularly chalking Queequeg’s 
person as he shifted the rule. 


MOB Y DICK. 


449 


“Ah! poor fellow! he’ll have to die now,” ejaculated 
the Long Island sailor. 

Going to his vice-bench, the carpenter for convenience 
sake and general reference, now transferringly measured on 
it the exact length the coffin was to be, and then made the 
transfer permanent by cutting two notches at its extrem- 
ities. This done, he marshalled the planks and his tools, 
and to work. 

When the last nail was driven, and the lid duly planed 
and fitted, he lightly shouldered the coffin and went for- 
ward with it, inquiring ^whether they were ready for it yet 
in that direction. 

Overhearing the indignant but half-humcfrous cries with 
which the people on deck began to drive the coffin away, 
Queequeg, to every one’s consternation, commanded that 
the thing should be instantly brought to him, nor was there 
any denying him ; seeing that, of all mortals, some dying 
men are the most tyrannical ; and certainly, since they will 
shortly trouble us so little for evermore, the poor fellows 
ought to be indulged. 

Leaning over in his hammock, Queequeg long regarded 
the coffin with an attentive eye. He then called for his 
harpoon, had the wooden stock drawn from it, and then 
had the iron part placed in the coffin along with one of the 
paddles of his boat. All by his own request, also, biscuits 
were then ranged round the sides within : a flask of fresh 
water was placed at the head, and a small bag of woody 
earth scraped up in the hold at the foot ; and a piece of sail- 
cloth being rolled up for a pillow, Queequeg now entreated 
to be lifted into his final bed, that he might make trial of 
its comforts, if any it had. He lay without moving a few 
minutes, then told one to go to his bag and bring out his 
little god, Yojo. Then crossing his arms on his breast with 
Yojo between, he called for the coffin lid (hatch he called 
it) to be placed over him. The head part turned over with 
a leather hinge, and there lay Queequeg in his coffin with 
little but his composed countenance in view. “Rarmai” 
(it will do ; it is easy), he murmured at last, and signed to 
be replaced in his hammock. 

But ere this was done, Pip, who had been slily hovering 
near by all this while, drew nigh to him where he lay, and 
with soft sobbings, took him by the hand ; in the other, 
holding his tambourine. 

“ Poor rover ! will ye never have done with all this weary 

29 


450 


MOBY DICK. 


roving ? where go ye now ? But if the currents carry ye 
to those sweet Antilles where the beaches are only beat 
with water-lilies, will ye do one little errand for me ? Seek 
out one Pip, who’s now been missing long : I think he’s in 
those far Antilles. If ye find him, then comfort him ; for 
he must be very sad ; for look ! he’s left his tambourine be- ] 
hind; — I found it. Rig-a-dig, dig, dig! Now Queequeg, { 
die ; and I’ll beat ye your dying march.” 

“ I have heard,” murmured Starbuck, gazing down the 
scuttle, “ that in violent fevers, men, all ignorance, have 
talked in ancient tongues ; and that when the mystery is 
probed, it turns out always that in their wholly forgotten 
childhood those ancient tongues had been really spoken in 
their hearing by some lofty scholars. So, to my fond faith, 
poor Pip, in this strange sweetness of his lunacy, brings 
heavenly vouchers of all our heavenly homes. Where 
learned he that, but there ? — Hark ! he speaks again : but 
more wildly now.” 

Form two and two ! Let’s make a General of him ! Ho, 
where’s his harpoon? Lay it across here. — Rig-a-dig, dig, 
dig ! huzza ! Oh for a game cock now to sit upon his head 
and crow ! Queequeg dies game ! — mind ye that ; Quee- | 
queg dies game ! — take ye good heed of that ; Queequeg 
dies game ! I say ; game, game, game ! but base little Pip, 
he died a coward ; died all a’ shiver ; — out upon Pip ! Hark 
ye : if ye find Pip, tell all the Antilles he’s a runaway ; a 
coward, a coward, a coward! Tell them he jumped from a 
whale-boat ! I’d never beat my tambourine over base Pip, 
and hail him General, if he were once more dying here. No, 
no ! shame upon all cowards — shame upon them ! Let ’em 
go drown like Pip, that jumped from a whale-boat. Shame ! 
shame ! ” 

During all this, Queequeg lay with closed eyes, as if in i 
a dream. Pip was led away, and the sick man was replaced 
in his hammock. 

But now that he had apparently made every preparation 
for death ; now that his coffin was proved a good fit, Quee- 
queg suddenly rallied; soon there seemed no need of the 
carpenter’s box : and thereupon, when some expressed their 
delighted surprise, he, in substance, said, that the cause of 
his sudden convalescence was this : — at a critical moment, 
he had just recalled a little duty ashore, which he was leav- 
ing undone ; and therefore had changed his mind about 
dying : he could not die yet, he averred. They asked him, 


MOBY DICK . 


451 


then, whether to live or die was a matter of his own sover- 
eign will and pleasure. He answered, certainly. In a word, 
it was Queequeg’ s conceit that if a man made up his mind 
to live, mere sickness could not kill him: nothing but a 
whale, or a gale, or some violent, ungovernable, unintelli- 
gent destroyer of that sort. 

Now, there is this noteworthy difference between savage 
and civilised ; that while a sick, civilised man may be six 
months convalescing, generally speaking, a sick savage is 
almost half well again in a day. So, in good time my Quee- 
queg gained strength; and at length after sitting on the 
windlass for a few indolent days (but eating with a vigor- 
ous appetite) he suddenly leaped to his feet, threw out his 
arms and legs, gave himself a good stretching, yawned a little 
bit, and then springing into the head of his hoisted boat, 
and poising a harpoon, pronounced himself fit for a fight. 

With a wild whimsiness, he now used his coffin for a sea- 
chest ; and emptying into it his canvas bag of clothes, set 
them in order there. Many spare hours he spent, in carving 
the lid with all manner of grotesque figures and drawings ; 
and it seemed that hereby he was striving, in his rude way, 
to copy parts of the twisted tattooing on his body. And 
this tattooing had been the work of a departed prophet and 
seer of his island, who, by those hieroglyphic marks, had 
written out on his body a complete theory of the heavens 
and the earth, and a mystical treatise on the art of attaining 
truth ; so that Queequeg in his own proper person was a 
riddle to unfold; a wondrous work in one volume; but 
whose mysteries not even himself could read, though his 
own live heart beat against them ; and these mysteries were 
therefore destined in the end to moulder away with the 
living parchment whereon they were inscribed, and so be 
unsolved to the last. And this thought it must have been 
which suggested to Ahab that wild exclamation of his, 
when one morning turning away from surveying poor 
Queequeg — “ Oh, devilish tantalization of the gods ! ” 


452 


MOBY DICK, 


CHAPTER CXI. 

THE PACIFIC. 

Whe^ gliding by the Bashee isles we emerged at last 
upon the great South Sea ; were it not for other things, I 
could have greeted my dear Pacific with uncounted thanks, 
for now the long supplication of my youth was answered ; 
that serene ocean rolled eastwards from me a thousand 
leagues of blue. 

There is, one knows not what sweet mystery about this 
sea, whose gently awful stirrings seem to speak of some 
hidden soul beneath ; like those fabled undulations of the 
Ephesian sod over the buried Evangelist St. John. And 
meet it is, that over these sea-pastures, wide-rolling watery 
prairies and Potters’ Fields of all four continents, the waves 
should rise and fall, and ebb and flow unceasingly ; for here, 
millions of mixed shades and shadows, drowned dreams, 
somnambulisms, reveries ; all that we call lives and souls, 
lie dreaming, dreaming, still ; tossing like slumberers in 
their beds ; the ever-rolling waves but made so by their 
restlessness. 

To any meditative Magian rover, this serene Pacific once 
beheld, must ever after be the sea of his adoption. It rolls 
the midmost waters of the world, the Indian ocean and 
Atlantic being but its arms. The same waves wash the 
moles of the new-built Californian towns, but yesterday 
planted by the recentest race of men, and lave the faded 
but still gorgeous skirts of Asiatic lands, older than Abra- 
ham ; while all between float milky- ways of coral isles, and 
low-lying, endless, unknown Archipelagoes, and impen- 
etrable Japans. Thus this mysterious, divine Pacific zones 
the world’s whole bulk about ; makes all coasts one bay to 
it ; seems the tide-beating heart of earth. Lifted by those 
eternal swells, you needs must own the seductive god, bow- 
ing your head to Pan. 

But few thoughts of Pan stirred Ahab’s brain, as stand- 
ing like an iron statue at his accustomed place beside the 
mizzen rigging, with one nostril he unthinkingly snuffed 
the sugary musk from the Bashee isles (in whose sweet 


MOBY DICK. 


453 


woods mild lovers must be walking), and with the other 
consciously inhaled the salt breath of the new found sea ; 
that sea in which the hated White Whale must even then 
be swimming. Launched at length upon these almost 
final waters, and gliding towards the Japanese cruising- 
ground, the old man’s purpose intensified itself. His firm 
lips met like the lips of a vice ; the Delta of his forehead’s 
veins swelled like overladen brooks ; in his very sleep, his 
ringing cry ran through the vaulted hull, “ Stern all ! the 
White Whale spouts thick blood ! ” 


CHAPTER CXIL 

THE BLACKSMITH. 

Availing himself of the mild, summer-cool weather that 
now reigned in these latitudes, and in preparation for the 
peculiarly active pursuits shortly to be anticipated, Perth, 
the begrimed, blistered old blacksmith, had not removed his 
portable forge to the hold again, after concluding his con- 
tributory work for Ahab’s leg, but still retained it on deck, 
fast lashed to ringbolts by the foremast ; being now almost 
incessantly invoked by the headsmen, and harpooners, and 
bowsinen to do some little job for them ; altering, or repair- 
ing, or new shaping their various weapons and boat furni- 
ture. Often he would be surrounded by an eager circle, all 
waiting to be served ; holding boat-spades, pike-heads, har- 
poons, and lances, and jealously watching his every sooty 
movement, as he toiled. Nevertheless, this old man’s was 
a patient hammer wielded by a patient arm. No murmur, 
no impatience, no petulance did come from him. Silent, 
slow, and solemn ; bowing over still further his chronically 
broken back, he toiled away, as if toil were life itself, and 
the heavy beating of his hammer the heavy beating of his 
heart. And so it was. — Most miserable ! 

A peculiar walk in this old man, a certain slight but pain- 
ful appearing yawing in his gait, had at an early period of 
the voyage excited the curiosity of the mariners. And to 
the importunity of their persisted questionings he had fin- 
ally given in ; and so it came to pass that every one now 
knew the shameful story of his wretched fate. 

Belated and not innocently, one bitter winter’s midnight, 


454 


MOB Y DICK. 


on the road running between two country towns, the black- 
smith half-stupidly felt the deadly numbness stealing over 
him and sought refuge in a leaning, dilapidated barn. The 
issue was, the loss of the extremities of both feet. Out of 
this revelation, part by part, at last came out the four acts 
of the gladness, and the one long, and as yet uncatastro- 
phied fifth act of the grief of his life’s drama. 

He was an old man, who, at the age of nearly sixty, had 
postponedly encountered that thing in sorrow’s technicals 
called ruin. He had been an artisan of famed excellence, 
and with plenty to do ; owned a house and garden ; em- 
braced a youthful, daughter-like, loving wife, and three 
blithe, ruddy children ; every Sunday went to a cheerful-look- 
ing church, planted in a grove. But one night, under cover 
of darkness, and further concealed in a most cunning dis- 
guisement, a desperate burglar slid into his happy home, and 
robbed them all of everything. And darker yet to tell, the 
blacksmith himself did ignorantly conduct this burglar in- 
to his family’s heart. It was the Bottle Conjuror ! Upon the 
opening of that fatal cork, forth flew the fiend, and shrivel- 
led up his home. How, for prudent, most wise, and econo- 
mic reasons, the blacksmith’s shop was in the basement of 
his dwelling, but with a separate entrance to it ; so that al- 
ways had the young and loving healthy wife listened with 
no unhappy nervousness, but with vigorous pleasure, to the 
stout ringing of her young-armed old husband’s hammer ; 
whose reverberations, muffled by passing through the floors 
and walls, came up to her, not unsweetly, in her nursery ; 
and so, to stout Labor’s iron lullaby, the blacksmith’s in- 
fants were rocked to slumber. 

Oh, woe on woe! Oh, Death, why canst thou not some- 
times be timely ? Iladst thou taken this old blacksmith to 
thyself ere his full ruin came upon him, then had the young 
widow had a delicious grief, and her orphans a truly ven- 
erable, legendary sire to dream of in their after years ; and 
all of them a care-killing competency. But Death plucked 
down some virtuous elder brother, on whose whistling daily 
toil solely hung the responsibilities of some other family, 
and left the worse than useless old man standing, till the 
hideous rot of life should make him easier to harvest. 

Why tell the whole ? The blows of the basement ham- 
mer every day grew more and more between ; and each 
blow every day grew fainter than the last ; the Avife sat 
frozen at the window, with tearless eyes, glitteringly gazing 


MOB Y DICK. 


455 


into the weeping faces of her children ; the bellows fell ; 
the forge choked up with cinders ; the house was sold ; the 
mother dived down into the long churchyard grass ; her 
children twice followed her thither; and the houseless, 
familyless old man staggered off a vagabond in crape ; his 
every woe unreverenced ; his grey head a scorn to flaxen 
curls ! 

Death seems the only desirable sequel for a career like 
this ; but Death is only a launching into the region of the 
strange Untried ; it is but the first salutation to the possi- 
bilities of the immense Remote, the Wild, the Watery, the 
Unshored; therefore, to the death-longing eyes of such 
men, who still have left in them some interior compunc- 
tions against suicide, does the all-contributed and all- 
receptive ocean alluringly spread forth his whole plain 
of unimaginable, taking terrors, and wonderful, new-life 
adventures ; and from the hearts of infinite Pacifies, the 
thousand mermaids sing to them — “ Come hither, broken- 
hearted ; here is another life without the guilt of interme- 
diate death ; here are wonders supernatural, without dying 
for them. Come hither ! bury thyself in a life which, to 
your now equally abhorred and abhorring, landed world, is 
more oblivious than death. Come hither! put up thy 
gravestone, too, within the churchyard, and come hither, 
till we marry thee ! ” 

Hearkening to these voices, East and West, by early sun- 
rise, and by fall of eve, the blacksmith’s soul responded, 
Aye, I come ! And so Perth went a- whaling. 


CHAPTER CXIII. 

THE FORGE. 

With matted beard, and swathed in a bristling shark- 
skin apron, about mid-day, Perth was standing between 
his forge and anvil, the latter placed upon an iron- wood log, 
with one hand holding a pike-head in the coals, and with 
the other at his forge’s lungs, when Captain Ahab came 
along, carrying in his hand a small rusty-looking leathern 
bag. While yet a little distance from the forge, moody 
Ahab paused; till at last, Perth, withdrawing his iron 
from the fire, began hammering it upon the anvil— the red 


45G 


MOB V DICE. 


mass sending off the sparks in thick hovering flights, some 
of which flew close to Ahab. 

“Are these thy Mother Carey’s chickens, Perth? they 
are always flying in thy wake ; birds of good omen, too, but 
not to all; — look here, they burn; but thou — thou liv’st 
among them without a scorch.’* 

“Because I am scorched all over, Captain Ahab,” an- 
swered Perth, resting for a moment on his hammer ; “ I am 
past scorching; not easily can’st thou scorch a scar.” 

“Well, well; no more. Thy shrunk voice sounds too 
calmly, sanely woful to me. In no Paradise myself, I am 
impatient of all misery in others that is not mad. Thou 
should’st go mad, blacksmith ; say, why dost thou not go 
mad ? How can’st thou endure without being mad ? Do 
the heavens yet hate thee, that thou can’st not go mad ? — 
What wert thou making there ? ” 

“Welding an old pike-head, sir; there were seams and 
dents in it.” 

“ And can’st thou make it all smooth again, blacksmith, 
after such hard usage as it had ? ” 

“ I think so, sir.” 

“ And I suppose thou can’st smooth almost any seams 
and dents ; never mind how hard the metal, blacksmith ? ” 
“ Aye, sir, I think I can ; all seams and dents but one.” 
“ Look ye here, then,” cried Ahab, passionately advanc- 
ing, and leaning with both hands on Perth’s shoulders ; 
“ look ye here — here — can ye smooth out a seam like this, 
blacksmith,” sweeping one hand across his ribbed brow; 
“ if thou could’st, blacksmith, glad enough would I lay my 
head upon thy anvil, and feel thy heaviest hammer between 
my eyes. Answer ! Can’st thou smooth this seam ? ” 

“ Oh ! that is the one, sir ! Said I not all seams and 
dents but one ? ” 

“ Aye, blacksmith, it is the one ; aye, man, it is un- 
smoothable ; for though thou only see’st it here in my flesh, 
it has worked down into the bone of my skull — that is all 
wrinkles ! But, away with child’s play ; no more gaffs and 
pikes to-day. Look ye here ! ” jingling the leathern bag, 
as if it were full of gold coins. “ I, too, want a harpoon 
made ; one that a thousand yoke of fiends could not part, 
Perth ; something that will stick in a whale like his own 
fin-bone. There’s the stuff,” flinging the pouch upon the 
anvil. “ Look ye, blacksmith, these are the gathered naii- 
stubbs of the steel shoes of racing horses.” 


MOB Y DICK. 


457 


“ Horse-shoe stubbs, sir? Why, Captain Aliab, thou 
hast here, then, the best and stubbornest stuff we black- 
smiths ever work. 

“ I know it, old man ; these stubbs will weld together 
like glue from the melted bones of murderers. Quick! 
forge me the harpoon. And forge me first, twelve rods for 
its shank ; then wind, and twist, and hammer these twelve 
together like the yarns and strans of a tow-line. Quick ! 
I’ll blow the fire.” 

When at last the twelve rods were made, Ahab tried 
them, one by one, by spiralling them, with his own hand, 
round a long, heavy iron bolt. “ A flaw ! ” rejecting the 
last one. “ Work that over again, Perth.” 

This done, Perth was about to begin wielding the twelve 
into one, when Ahab stayed his hand, and said he would 
weld his own iron. As, then, with regular, gasping hems, 
he hammered on the anvil, Perth passing to him the glow- 
ing rods, one after the other, and the hard pressed forge 
shooting up its intense straight flame, the Parsee passed 
silently, and bowing over his head towards the fire, seemed 
invoking some curse or some blessing on the toil. But, as 
Ahab looked up, he slid aside. 

“ What’s that bunch of lucifers dodging about there for? ” 
muttered Stubb, looking on from the forecastle. “ That 
Parsee smells fire like a fusee; and smells of it himself, 
like a hot musket’s powder-pan.” 

At last the shank, in one complete rod, received its final 
heat ; and as Perth, to temper it, plunged it all hissing into 
the cask of water near by, the scalding steam shot up into 
Ahab’s bent face. 

“ Wouldst thou brand me, Perth?” wincing for a 
moment with the pain ; “ have I been but forging my own 
branding-iron, then?” 

“ Pray God, not that ; yet I fear something, Captain 
Ahab. Is not this harpoon for the White Whale?” 

“ For the white fiend ! But now for the barbs ; thou 
must make them thyself, man. Here are my razors — the 
best of steel ; here, and make the barbs sharp as the needle- 
sleet of the Icy Sea.” 

For a moment, the old blacksmith eyed the razors as 
though he would fain not use them. 

“ Take them, man, I have no need for them ; for I now 
neither shave, sup, nor pray till but here — to work ! ” 

Fashioned at last into an arrowy shape, and welded by 


458 


MOBY DICK. 


Perth to the shank, the steel soon pointed the end of the 
iron; and as the blacksmith was about giving the barbs 
their final heat, prior to tempering them, he cried to Ahab 
to place the water-cask near. 

“No, no — no water for that ; I want it of the true death- 
temper. Ahoy, there! Tashtego, Queequeg, Daggoo! 
What say ye, pagans ! Will ye give me as much blood as 
will cover this barb ? ” holding it high up. A cluster of dark 
nods replied, Yes. Three punctures were made in the 
heathen flesh, and the White Whale’s barbs were then 
tempered. 

“ Ego non baptizo te in nomine patris, sed in nomine 
diaboli ! ” deliriously howled Ahab, as the malignant iron 
scorchingly devoured the baptismal blood. 

Now, mustering the spare poles from below, and select- 
ing one of hickory, with the bark still investing it, Ahab 
fitted the end to the socket of the iron. A coil of new tow- 
line was then unwound, and some fathoms of it taken to 
the windlass, and stretched to a great tension. Pressing 
his foot upon it, till the rope hummed like a harpstring, then 
eagerly bending over it, and seeing no strandings, Ahab 
exclaimed “ Good ! and now for the seizings.” 

At one extremity the rope was unstranded, and the 
separate spread yarns were all braided and woven round 
the socket of the harpoon ; the pole was then driven hard 
up into the socket ; from the lower end the rope was traced 
half-way along the pole’s length, and firmly secured so, 
with intertwistings of twine. This done, pole, iron, and 
rope — like the Three Fates — remained inseparable, and 
Ahab moodily stalked away with the weapon ; the sound 
of his ivory leg and the sound of the hickory pole, both 
hollowly ringing along every plank. But ere he entered 
his cabin, a light, unnatural, half-bantering, yet most 
piteous sound was heard. Oh, Pip ! thy wretched laugh, 
thy idle but unresting eye ; all thy strange mummeries not 
unmeaningly blended with the black tragedy of the mel- 
ancholy ship, and mocked it ! 


MOB Y DICK. 


459 


CHAPTER CXIV. 

THE GILDER. 

Penetrating further and further into the heart of the 
Japanese cruising ground, the Pequod was soon all astir in 
the fishery. Often, in mild, pleasant weather, for twelve, fif- 
teen, eighteen, and twenty hours on the stretch, they were 
engaged in the boats, steadily pulling, or sailing or pad- 
dling after the whales, or for an interlude of sixty or 
seventy minutes calmly awaiting their uprising ; though 
with but small success for their pains. 

At such times, under an abated sun ; afloat all day upon 
smooth, slow heaving swells ; seated in his boat, light as a 
birch canoe ; and so sociably mixing with the soft waves 
themselves, that like hearthstone cats they purr against 
the gunwale ; these are the times of dreamy quietude, when 
beholding the tranquil beauty and brilliancy of the ocean’s 
skin, one forgets the tiger heart that pants beneath it ; and 
would not willingly remember, that this velvet paw but 
conceals a remorseless fang. 

These are the times, when in his whale-boat the rover 
softly feels a certain filial, confident, land-like feeling toward 
the sea ; that he regards it as so much flowery earth ; and 
the distant ship revealing only the tops of her masts, seems 
struggling forward, not through high rolling waves, but 
through the tall grass of a rolling prairie : as when the 
western emigrants’ horses only show their erected ears, 
while their hidden bodies widely wade through the amazing 
verdure. 

The long-drawn virgin vales ; the mild blue hill-sides ; as 
over these there steals the hush, the hum ; you almost swear 
that play- wearied children lie sleeping in these solitudes, 
in some glad May-time, when the flowers of the woods are 
plucked. And all this mixes with your most mystic mood ; 
so that fact and fancy, half-way meeting, interpenetrate, and 
form one seamless whole. 

Xor did such soothing scenes, however temporary, fail of 
at least as temporary an effect on Ahab. But if these 
secret golden keys did seem to open in him his own secret 
golden treasuries, yet did his breath upon them prove but 
tarnishing. 


460 


MOB Y DICK. 


Oh, grassy glades ! oh, ever vernal endless landscapes in 
the soul ; in ye, — though long parched by the dead drought 
of the earthy life, — in ye, men yet may roll, like young 
horses in new morning clover; and for some few fleeting 
moments, feel the cool dew of the life immortal on them. 
Would to God these blessed calms would last. But the 
mingled, mingling threads of life are woven by warp and 
woof : calms crossed by storms, a storm for every calm. 
There is no steady un retracing progress in this life ; we do 
not advance through fixed gradations, and at the last one 
pause: — through infancy’s unconscious spell, boyhood’s 
thoughtless faith, adolescence, doubt (the common doom), 
then scepticism, then disbelief, resting at last in manhood’s 
pondering repose of Tf. But once gone through, we trace j 
the round again ; and are infants, boys, and men, and Ifs 
eternally. Where lies the final harbour, whence we un- 
moor no more? In what rapt ether sails the world, of j 
which the weariest will never weary ? Where is the found- 
ling’s father hidden? Our souls are like those orphans 
whose unwedded mothers die in bearing them ; the secret I 
of our paternity lies in their grave, and we must there to 
learn it. 

And that same day, too, gazing far down from his boat’s 
side into that same golden sea, Starbuck lowly mur- 
mured : — 

“ Loveliness unfathomable, as ever lover saw in his young 
bride’s eye ! — Tell me not of thy teeth-tiered sharks, and i 
thy kidnapping cannibal ways. Let faith oust fact; let 
fancy oust memory ; I look deep down and do believe.” 

And Stubb, fish-like, with sparkling scales, leaped up in j 
that same golden light : — 

“ I am Stubb, and Stubb has his history ; but here Stubb j 
takes oaths that he has always been jolly! ” 


CHAPTER CXY. 

THE PE QUOD MEETS THE BACHELOR. 

And jolly enough were the sights and the sounds that 
came bearing down before the wind, some few weeks after j 
Ahab’s harpoon had been welded. 

It was a Nantucket ship, the Bachelor, which had just I 
wedged in her last cask of oil, and bolted down her burst- 
ing hatches ; and now, in glad holiday apparel, was joy- 


MOBY DICK . 


461 


ously, though somewhat vain-gloriously, sailing round 
among the widely-separated ships on the ground, previous 
to pointing her prow for home. 

The three men at her mast-head wore long streamers of 
narrow red hunting at their hats ; from the stern, a whale- 
boat was suspended, bottom down ; and hanging captive 
from the bowsprit was seen the long lower jaw of the last 
whale they had slain. Signals, ensigns, and jacks of all 
colours were flying from her rigging, on every side. Side- 
ways lashed in each of her three basketed tops were two 
barrels of sperm ; above which, in her top-mast cross-trees, 
you saw slender breakers of the same precious fluid ; and 
nailed to her main truck was a brazen lamp. 

As was afterwards learned, the Bachelor had met with 
the most surprising success ; all the more wonderful, for 
that while cruising in the same seas numerous other ves- 
sels had gone entire months without securing a single fish. 
Not only had barrels of beef and bread been given away to 
make room for the far more valuable sperm, but additional 
supplemental casks had been bartered for, from the ships 
she had met ; and these w'ere stowed along the deck, and 
in the captain’s and officers’ state-rooms. Even the cabin 
table itself had been knocked into kindling-wood ; and the 
cabin mess dined off the broad head of an oil-butt, lashed 
down to the floor for a centrepiece. In the forecastle, the 
sailors had actually caulked and pitched their chests, and 
filled them ; it was humorously added, that the cook had 
clapped a head on his largest boiler, and filled it ; that the 
steward had plugged his spare coffee-pot and filled it ; that 
the harpooners had headed the sockets of their irons and 
filled them ; that indeed everything was filled with sperm, 
except the captain’s pantaloons pockets, and those he re- 
served to thrust his hands into, in self-complacent testi- 
mony of his entire satisfaction. 

As this glad ship of good luck bore down upon the moody 
Pequod, the barbarian sound of enormous drums came 
from her forecastle ; and drawing still nearer, a crowd of 
her men were seen standing round her huge try-pots, which, 
covered with the parchment-like poke or stomach skin of 
the black fish, gave forth a loud roar to every stroke of the 
clenched hands of the crew. On the quarter-deck, the 
mates and harpooners were dancing with the olive-hued 
girls who had eloped with them from the Polynesian Isles ; 
while suspended in an ornamented boat, firmly secured aloft 


462 


MOBY DICK. 


between the foremast and mainmast, three Long Island 
negroes, with glittering fiddle-bows of whale ivory, were 
presiding over the hilarious jig. Meanwhile, others of the 
ship’s company were tumultuously busy at the masonry of 
the try-works, from which the huge pots had been removed. 
You would have almost thought they were pulling down 
the cursed Bastile, such wild cries they raised, as the now 
useless brick and mortar were being hurled into the sea. 

Lord and master over all this scene, the captain stood 
erect on the ship’s elevated quarter-deck, so that the whole 
rejoicing drama was full before him, and seemed merely 
contrived for his own individual diversion. 

And Ahab, he too was standing on his quarter-deck, 
shaggy and black, with a stubborn gloom ; and as the two 
ships crossed each other’s wakes — one all jubilations for 
things passed, the other all forebodings as to things to come 
■ — their two captains in themselves impersonated the whole 
striking contrast of the scene. 

“Come aboard, come aboard!” cried the gay Bachelor’s 
commander, lifting a glass and a bottle in the air. 

“ Hast seen the White Whale? ” gritted Ahab in reply. 

“ Ho ; only heard of him ; but don’t believe in him at all,” 
said the other good-humouredly. “ Come aboard ! ” 

“ Thou art too damned jolly. Sail on. Hast lost any 
men ? ” 

“Not enough to speak of — two islanders, that’s all; — but 
come aboard, old hearty, come along. I’ll soon take that 
black from your brow. Come along, will ye (merry’s the 
play); a full ship and homeward-bound.” 

“ How wondrous familiar is a fool ! ” muttered Ahab ; 
then aloud, “ Thou art a full ship and homeward bound, thou 
sayst; well, then, call me an empty ship, and outward- 
bound. So go thy ways, and I will mine. Forward there ! 
Set all sail, and keep her to the wind ! ” 

And thus, while the one ship went cheerily before the 
breeze, the other stubbornly fought against it ; and so the 
two vessels parted ; the crew of the Pequod looking with 
grave, lingering glances towards the receding Bachelor ; but 
the Bachelor’s men never heeding their gaze for the lively rev- 
elry they were in. And as Ahab, leaning over the taffrail, 
eyed the homeward-bound craft he took from his pocket a 
small vial of sand, and then looking from the ship to the 
vial, seemed thereby bringing two remote associations to- 
gether, for that vial was filled with Nantucket soundings. 




MOBY DICK. 


463 


CHAPTER CXVI. 

THE DYING WHALE. 

Hot seldom in this life, when, on the right side, fortune’s 
favourites sail close by us, we, though all adroop before, 
catch somewhat of the rushing breeze, and joyfully feel 
our bagging sails fill out. So seemed it with the Pequod. 
For next day after encountering the gay Bachelor, whales 
were seen and four were slain; and one of thembyAhab. 

It was far down the afternoon ; and when all the spear- 
ings of the crimson fight were done : and floating in the 
lovely sunset sea and sky, sun and whale both stilly died 
together ; then, such a sweetness and such plaintiveness, 

! such inwreathing orisons curled up in that rosy air, that it 
| almost seemed as if far over from the deep green convent 
valleys of the Manilla isles, the Spanish land-breeze, wan- 
tonly turned sailor, had gone to sea, freighted with these 
, vesper hymns. 

Soothed again, but only soothed to deeper gloom, Ahab, 
who had sterned off from the whale, sat intently watching 
his final wanings from the now tranquil boat. For that 
strange spectacle observable in all sperm whales dying — 
the turning sunwards of the head, and so expiring — that 
strange spectacle, beheld of such a placid evening, some- 
how to Ahab conveyed a wondrousness unknown before. 

“ He turns and turns him to it,— how slowly, but how 
steadfastly, his homage-rendering and invoking brow, with 
his last dying motions. He too worships fire ; most faith- 
ful, broad, baronial vassal of the sun ! — Oh that these too- 
favouring eyes should see these too-favouring sights. Look ! 
here, far water-locked ; beyond all hum of human weal or 
woe ; in these most candid and impartial seas ; where to 
traditions no rocks furnish tablets ; where for long Chinese 
ages, the billows have still rolled on speechless and un- 
spoken to, as stars that shine upon the Niger’s unknown 
source ; here, too, life dies sunwards full of faith ; but see ! 
no sooner dead, than death whirls round the corpse, and it 
heads some other way. — 

“Oh, thou dark Hindoo half of nature, who of drowned 
bones hast builded thy separate throne somewhere in the 


464 


MOBY DICK. 


heart of these unverdured seas ; thou art an infidel, thou 
queen, and too truly speakest to me in the wide-slaughter- 
ing Typhoon, and the hushed burial of its after calm. Nor 
has this thy whale sunwards turned his dying head, and 
then gone round again, without a lesson to me. 

“ Oh, trebly hooped and welded hip of power ? Oh, high 
aspiring, rainbowed jet ! — that one strivest, this one jettest 
all in vain ! In vain, oh whale, dost thou seek intercedings 
with yon all-quickening sun, that only calls forth life, but “ 
gives it not again. Yet dost thou, darker half, rock me t 
with a prouder, if a darker faith. All thy unnamable im- \ 
minglings float beneath me here ; I am buoyed by breaths 
of once living things, exhaled as air, but water now. 

“ Then hail, forever hail, O sea, in whose eternal tossings 
the wild fowl finds his only rest. Born of earth, yet suckled 
by the sea ; though hill and valley mothered me, ye billows 
are my foster-brothers ! ” 


CHAPTER CXVII. 

THE WHALE WATCH. 

The four whales slain that evening had died wide apart ; 
one, far to windward ; one, less distant, to leeward ; one 1 
ahead ; one astern. These last three were brought along- 
side ere nightfall ; but the windward one could not be 
reached till morning ; and the boat that had killed it lay by j 
its side all night; and that boat was Ahab’s. 

The waif-pole was thrust upright into the dead whale’s I 
spout-hole ; and the lantern hanging from its top cast a 
troubled flickering glare upon the black, glossy back, and 
far out upon the midnight waves, which gently chafed the |j 
whale’s broad flank, like soft surf upon a beach. 

Ahab and all his boat’s crew seemed asleep but the Par- I 
see ; who crouching in the bow, sat watching the sharks, 1 
that spectrally played round the whale, and tapped the ( 
light cedar planks with their tails. A sound like the moan- | 
ing in squadrons over Asphaltites of unforgiven ghosts of 
Gomorrah, ran shuddering through the air. 

Started from his slumbers, Ahab, face to face, saw the 
Parsee ; and hooped round by the gloom of the night they 
seemed the last men in a flooded world. “I have dreamed 
it again,” said he. 


MOB Y DICK . 465 

“ Of the hearses ? Have I not said, old man, that neither 
hearse nor coffin can be thine ? ” 

“ And who are hearsed that die on the sea ? ” 

“ But I said, old man, that ere thou couldst die on this 
voyage, two hearses must verily be seen by thee on the 
sea ; the first not made by mortal hands ; and the visible 
wood of the last one must be grown in America.” 

“Aye, aye! a strange sight that, Par see: — a hearse and 
its plumes floating over the ocean with the waves for the 
pallbearers. Ha ! Such a sight we shall not soon see.” 

“ Believe it or not, thou canst not die till it be seen, old 
man.” 

“ And what was that saying about thyself ? ” 

“ Though it come to the last, I shall still go before thee 
thy pilot.” 

“ And when thou art so gone before — if that ever befall 
— then ere I can follow, thou must still appear to me, to 
pilot me still? — Was it not so? Well, then, did I believe 
all ye say, oh my pilot! I have here two pledges that I 
shall yet slay Moby Dick and survive it.” 

“ Take another pledge, old man,” said the Parsee, as his 
eyes lighted up like fire-flies in the gloom — “ Hemp only 
can kill thee.” 

“ The gallows, ye mean. — I am immortal then, on land 
and on sea,” cried" Ahab, with a laugh of derision ; — “ Im- 
mortal on land and on sea ! ” 

Both were silent again, as one man. The grey dawn 
came on, and the slumbering crew arose from the boat’s 
bottom, and ere noon the dead whale was brought to the 
ship. 


CHAPTER CXVIII. 

THE QUADRANT. 

The season for the Line at length drew near ; and every 
day when Ahab, coming from his cabin, cast his eyes aloft, 
the vigilant helmsman would ostentatiously handle his 
spokes, and the eager mariners quickly run to the braces, 
and would stand there with all their eyes centrally fixed 
on the nailed doubloon ; impatient for the order to point 
the ship’s prow for the equator. In good time the order 
came. It was hard upon high noon ; and Ahab, seated in 


466 


MOBY DICK. 


the bows of his high-hoistecl boat, was about taking his 
wonted daily observation of the sun to determine his lati- 
tude. 

Now, in that Japanese sea, the days in summer are as 
freshets of effulgences. That unblinkingly vivid Japanese 
sun seems the blazing focus of the glassy ocean’s immeasur- 
able burning-glass. The sky looks lacquered ; clouds there 
are none ; the horizon floats ; and this nakedness of unre- 
lieved radiance is as the insufferable splendors of God’s j 
throne. Well that Ahab’s quadrant was furnished with 
colored glasses, through which to take sight of that solar 
fire. So, swinging his seated form to the roll of the ship, 
and with his astrological-looking instrument placed to his 
eye, he remained in that posture for some moments to catch 
the precise instant when the sun should gain its precise 
meridian. Meantime, while his whole attention was 
absorbed, the Parsee was kneeling beneath him on the 
ship’s deck, and with face thrown up like Ahab’s, was eye- 
ing the same sun with him ; only the lids of his eyes half 
hooded their orbs, and his wild face was subdued to an 
earthly passionlessness. At length the desired observation 
was taken ; and with his pencil upon his ivory leg, Ahab 
soon calculated what his latitude must be at that precise 
instant. Then falling into a moment’s reverie, he again 
looked up towards the sun and murmured to himself : 

“ Thou sea-mark ! thou high and mighty Pilot ! thou tellest 
me truly where I am — but canst thou cast the least 
hint where I shall be? Or canst thou tell where some other 
thing besides me is this moment living? Where is Moby -i 
Dick ? This instant thou must be eyeing him. These eyes 
of mine look into the very eye that is even now beholding 
him ; aye, and into the eye that is even now equally behold- 
ing the objects on the unknown, thither side of thee, thou 
sun ! ” 

Then gazingat his quadrant, and handling, one after the 
other, its numerous cabalistical contrivances, he pondered 
again, and muttered : “ Foolish toy ! babies’ plaything of j 
haughty Admirals, and Commodores, and Captains ; the I 
world brags of thee, of thy cunning and might ; but what 
after all canst thou do, but tell the poor, pitiful point, 
where thou thyself happenest to be on this wide planet, 
and the hand that holds thee : no ! not one jot more ! Thou 
canst not tell where one drop of water or one grain of sand 
will be to-morrow noon ; and yet with thy impotence thou 


MOB Y DICK. 


467 


insultest the sun ! Science ! Curse thee, thou vain toy ; and 
cursed he all the things that cast man’s eyes aloft to that 
heaven, whose live vividness but scorches him, as these 
old eyes are even now scorched with thy light, O sun! 
Level by nature to this earth’s horizon are the glances of 
man’s eyes ; not shot from the crown of his head, as if God 
had meant him to gaze on his firmament. Curse thee, thou 
quadrant ! ” dashing it to the deck, “ no longer will I guide 
my earthly way by thee ; the level ship’s compass, and the 
level dead-reckoning, by log and by line ; these shall conduct 
me, and show me my place on the sea. Aye,” lighting 
from the boat to the deck, “ thus I trample on thee, thou 
paltry thing that feebly pointest on high ; thus I split and 
destroy thee ! ” 

As the frantic old man thus spoke and thus trampled 
with his live and dead feet, a sneering triumph that seemed 
meant for Ahab, and a fatalistic despair that seemed meant 
for himself — these passed over the mute, motionless Par- 
see’s face. Unobserved he rose and glided away ; while, 
awestruck by the aspect of their commander, the seamen 
clustered together on the forecastle, till Ahab, troubledly 
pacing the deck, shouted out — “ To the braces ! Up helm ! 
— square in ! ” 

In an instant the yards swung round ; and as the ship 
half wheeled upon her heel, her three firm- seated graceful 
masts erectly poised upon her long, ribbed hull, seemed as 
the three Horatii pirouetting on one sufficient steed. 

Standing between the knight-head Starbuck watched the 
Pequod’s tumultuous way, and Ahab’s also, as he went 
lurching along the deck. 

“ I have sat before the dense coal fire and watched it all 
aglow, full of its tormented flaming life ; and I have seen 
it wane at last, down, down, to dumbest dust. Old man of 
oceans ! of all this fiery life of thine, what will at length 
remain but one little heap of ashes ! ” 

“ Aye,” cried Stubb, “ but sea-coal ashes — mind ye that, 
Mr. Starbuck — sea-coal, not your common charcoal. Well, 
well ; I heard Ahab mutter, ‘ Here some one thrusts these 
cards into these old hands of mine ; swears that I must play 
them and no others.’ And damn me, Ahab, but thou act- 
est right ; live in the game, and die in it ! ” 


468 


MOB Y DICK. 


CHAPTER CXIX. 

THE CANDLES. 

Warmest climes but nurse the cruellest fangs : the tiger 
of Bengal crouches in spiced groves of ceaseless verdure. 
Skies the most effulgent but basket the deadliest thunders : 
gorgeous Cuba knows tornadoes that never swept tame 
northern lands. So, too, it is, that in these resplendent 
Japanese seas the mariner encounters the direst of all 
storms, the Typhoon. It will sometimes burst from out 
that cloudless sky, like an exploding bomb upon a dazed 
and sleepy town. 

Towards evening of that day, the Pequod was torn of her 
canvas, and bare-poled was left to fight a Typhoon which 
had struck her directly ahead. When darkness came on, 
sky and sea roared and split with the thunder, and blazed 
with the lightning, that showed the disabled masts flutter- 
ing here and there with the rags which the first fury of the 
tempest had left for its after sport. 

Holding by a shroud, Starbuck was standing on the 
quarter-deck ; at every flash of the lightning glancing aloft, 
to see what additional disaster might have befallen the in- 
tricate hamper there ; while Stubb and flask were directing 
the men in the higher hoisting and firmer lashing of the boats. 
But all their pains seemed naught. Though lifted to the 
very top of the cranes, the windward quarter boat (Ahab’s) 
did not escape. A great rolling sea, dashing high up against 
the reeling ship’s high tetering side, stove in the boat’s 
bottom at the stern, and left it again, all dripping through 
like a sieve. 

“ Bad work, bad work ! Mr. Starbuck,” said Stubb, regard- 
ing the wreck, “ but the sea will have its way. Stubb, for 
one, can’t fight it. You see, Mr. Starbuck, a wave has such 
a great long start before it leaps, all round the world it 
runs, and then comes the spring ! But as for me, all the 
start I have to meet it, is just across the deck here. But 
never mind ; it’s all in fun : so the old song says ; ” — {sings.) 

Oh ! jolly is the gale, 

And a joker is the whale, 

A’ flourisliin’ his tail, — 

Such a funny, sporty, gamy, jesty, joky, hoky-poky lad, is the Oc^an, oh! 


MOBY DICK. 


469 


The scud all a flyin’, 

That’ s his flip only foamin’ ; 

When he stirs in the spicin’ — 

Such a funny, sporty, gamy, jesty, joky, hoky-poky lad, is the Ocean, oh! 

Thunder splits the ships, 

But he only smacks his lips, 

A tastin’ of this flip, — 

Such a funny, sporty, gamy, jesty, joky, hoky-poky lad is the Ocean, oh ! 

“ Avast Stubb,” cried Starbuck. “ Let the Typhoon sing, 
and strike his harp here in our rigging ; but if thou art a 
brave man thou wilt hold thy peace.” 

“ But I am not a brave man ; never said I was a brave 
man ; I am a coward ; and I sing to keep up my spirits. 
And I tell you what it is, Mr. Starbuck, there’s no way to 
stop my singing in this world but to cut my throat. And 
when that’s done, ten to one I sing ye the doxology for a 
wind-up,” 

“ Madman ! look through my eyes if thou hast none of 
thine own.” 

“ What ! how can you see better of a dark night than any- 
body else, never mind how foolish ? ” 

“ Here ! ” cried Starbuck, seizing Stubb by the shoulder, 
and pointing his hand towards the weather bow, “ markest 
thou not that the gale comes from the eastward, the very 
course Ahab is to run for Moby Dick ? the very course he 
swung to this day noon ? now mark his boat there ; where 
is that stove ? In the sternsheets, man ; where he is wont 
to stand — his stand-point is stove, man ! Now jump over- 
board, and sing away, if thou must! ” 

“ I don’t half understand ye : what’s in the wind? ” 

“Yes, yes, round the Cape of Good Hope is the shortest 
way to Nantucket,” soliloquised Starbuck suddenly, heedless 
of Stubb’s question. “ The gale that now hammers at us 
to stave us, we can turn it into a fair wind that will drive 
us towards home. Yonder, to windward, all is blackness 
of doom ; but to leeward, homeward — I see it lightens up 
there ; but not with the lightning.” 

At that moment in one of the intervals of profound dark- 
ness, following the flashes, a voice was heard at his side ; 
and almost at the same instant a volley of thunder peals 
rolled overhead. 

“ Who’s there?” 

“ Qld Thunder ! ” said Ahab, groping his way along the 


470 


MOBY DICK. 


bulwarks to his pivot-hole ; but suddenly finding his path 
made plain to him by elbowed lances of fire. 

Now, as the lightning rod to a spire on shore is intended 
to carry off the perilous fluid into the soil ; so the kindred 
rod which at sea some ships carry to each mast, is intended 
to conduct it into the water. But as this conductor must 
descend to considerable depth, that its end may avoid all 
contact with the hull ; and as moreover, if kept constantly 
towing there, it would be liable to many mishaps, besides 
interfering not a little with some of the rigging, and more 
or less impeding the vessel’s way in the water ; because of 
all this, the lower parts of a ship’s lightning-rods are not 
always overboard ; but are generally made in long slender 
links, so as to be the more readily hauled up into the chains 
outside, or thrown down into the sea, as occasion may 
require. 

“ The rods ! the rods ! ” cried Starbuck to the crew, sud- 
denly admonished to vigilance by the vivid lightning that 
had just been darting flambeaux, to light Ahab to his post. 
“ Are they overboard ? drop them over, fore and aft. 
Quick !” 

“ Avast ! ” cried Ahab ; “ let’s have fair play here, though 
we be the weaker side. Yet I’ll contribute to raise rods on 
the Himmalayas and Andes, that all the world may be 
secured ; but out on privileges ! Let them be, sir.” 

“ Look aloft ! ” cried Starbuck. “ The corpusants ! the 
corpusants ! 

All the yard-ams were tipped with a pallid fire; and 
touched at each tri-pointed lightning-rod-end with three 
tapering white flames, each of the three tall masts was 
silently burning in that sulphurous air, like three gigantic 
wax tapers before an altar. 

“ Blast the boat ! let it go ! ” cried Stubb at this instant, 
as a swashing sea heaved up under his own little craft, so 
that its gunwale violently jammed his hand, as he was pass- 
ing a lashing. “ Blast it ! ” — but slipping backward on the 
deck, his uplifted eyes caught the flames ; and immediately 
shifting his tone, he cried — “ The corpusants have mercy 
on us all ! ” 

To sailo*rs, oaths are household w~ords ; they will swear 
in the trance of the calm, and in the teeth of the tempest ; 
they will imprecate curses from the topsail-yard-arms, when 
most they teter over to a seething sea ; but in all my voyag- 
ings, seldom have I heard a common oath when God’s burn- 


MOBY DICK . 


471 


ing finger has been laid on the ship ; when His “ Mene, 
Mene, Tekel Upharsin” has been woven into the shrouds 
and the cordage. 

While this pallidness was burning aloft, few words were 
heard from the enchanted crew ; who in one thick cluster 
stood on the forecastle, all their eyes gleaming in that pale 
phosphorescence, like a far away constellation of stars. 
Relieved against the ghostly light, the gigantic jet negro, 
Daggoo, loomed up to thrice his real stature, and seemed 
the black cloud from which the thunder had come. The 
parted mouth of Tashtego revealed his shark- white teeth, 
which strangely gleamed as if they too had been tipped by 
corpusants ; while lit up by the preternatural light, Quee- 
queg’s tattooing burned like Satanic blue flames on his 
body. 

The tableau all waned at last with the pallidness aloft ; 
and once more the Pequod and every soul on her decks 
were wrapped in a pall. A moment or two passed, when 
Starbuck, going forward, pushed against some one. It was 
Stubb. “ What thinkest thou now, man ; I heard thy cry ; 
it was not the same in the song.” 

“ No, no, it wasn’t ; I said the corpusants have mercy on 
us all ; and I hope they will, still. But do they only have 
mercy on long faces ? — have they no bowels for a laugh ? 
And look ye, Mr. Starbuck — but it’s too dark to look. 
Hear me, then : I take that mast-head flame we saw for a 
sign of good luck ; for those masts are rooted in a hold that 
is going to be chock a’ block with sperm -oil, d’ye see ; and 
so, all that sperm will work up into the masts, like sap in a 
tree. Yes, our three masts will yet be as three spermaceti 
candles — that’s the good promise we saw.” 

At that moment Starbuck caught sight of Stubb’s face 
slowly beginning to glimmer into sight. Glancing up- 
wards, he cried : “ See ! see ! ” and once more the high 

tapering flames were beheld with what seemed redoubled 
supernaturalness in their pallor. 

“ The corpusants have mercy on us all,” cried Stubb, 
again. 

At the base of the mainmast, full beneath the doubloon 
and the flame, the Parsee was kneeling in Ahab’s front, but 
with his head bowed away from him ; while near by, from 
the arched and overhanging rigging, where they had just 
been engaged securing a spar, a number of the seamen, ar- 
rested by the glare, now cohered together, and hung pen- 


472 


MOB Y DICK. 


dulous, like a knot of numbed wasps from a drooping, or- 
chard twig. In various enchanted attitudes, like the stand- 
ing, or stepping, or running skeletons in Herculaneum, 
others remained rooted to the decks ; but all their eyes up- 
cast. 

“ Aye, aye, men ! ” cried Ahab. “ Look up at it ; mark 
it well; the white flame but lights the way to the White 
Whale ! Hand me those main-mast links there ; I would 
fain feel this pulse, and let mine beat against it ; blood 
against fire ! So.” 

Then turning — the last link held fast in his left hand, he 
put his foot upon the Parsee ; and with fixed upward eye, 
and high-flung right arm, he stood erect before the lofty 
tripointed trinity of flames. 

“ Oh ! thou clear spirit of clear fire, whom on these seas 
I as Persian once did worship, till in the sacramental act 
so burned by thee, that to this hour I bear the scar ; I now 
know thee, thou clear spirit, and I now know that thy 
right worship is defiance. To neither love nor reverence 
wilt thou be kind ; and e’en for hate thou canst but kill ; 
and all are killed. No fearless fool now fronts thee. I 
own thy speechless, placeless power ; but to the last gasp 
of my earthquake life will dispute its unconditional, un- 
integral mastery in me. In the midst of the personified 
impersonal, a personality stands here. Though but a point 
at best ; whencesoe’er I came ; wheresoe’er I go; yet while 
I earthly live, the queenly personality lives in me, and feels 
her royal rights. But war is pain, and hate is woe. Come 
in thy lowest form of love, and I will kneel and kiss thee ; 
but at thy highest, come as mere supernal power ; and 
though thou launchest navies of full-freighted worlds, there’s 
that in here that still remains indifferent. Oh, thou clear 
spirit, of thy fire thou madest me, and like a true child of 
fire, I breathe it back to thee.” 

[ Sudden , repeated flashes of lightning / the nine flames 
leap lengthwise to thrice their previous height ; Ahab , with 
the rest , closes his eyes , his right hand pressed hard upon 
them.'] 

“ I own thy speechless, placeless power ; said I not so ? 
Nor was it wrung from me ; nor do I now drop these links. 
Thou canst blind ; but I can then grope. Thou canst con- 
sume ; but I can then be ashes. Make the homage of these 


MOBY DICK. 


473 


poor eyes, and shutter-hands. I would not take it. The 
lightning flashes through my skull; mine eye-balls ache 
and ache ; my whole beaten brain seems as beheaded, and 
rolling on some stunning ground. Oh, oh! Yet blind- 
fold, yet will I talk to thee. Light though thou be, thou 
leapest out of darkness ; but I am darkness leaping out of 
light, leaping out of thee ! The javelins cease ; open eyes ; 
see, or not ? There burn the flames ! Oh, thou magnani- 
„ mous ! now I do glory in my genealogy . But thou art but 
my fiery father ; my sweet mother, I know not. Oh, cruel ! 
what hast thou done with her ? There lies my puzzle ; but 
thine is greater. Thou knowest not how came ye, hence call- 
est thyself unbegotten ; certainly knowest not thy begin- 
ning, hence callest thyself unbegun. I know that of me, 
which thou knowest not of thyself, oh, thou omnipotent. 
There is some unsuffusing thing beyond thee, thou clear 
spirit, to whom all thy eternity is but time, all thy creative- 
ness mechanical. Through thee, thy flaming self, my 
scorched eyes do dimly see it. Oh, thou foundling fire, 
thou hermit immemorial, thou too hast thy incommunicable 
riddle, thy unparticipated grief. Here again with haughty 
agony, I read my sire. Leap ! leap up, and lick the sky ! I 
leap with thee ; I burn with thee ; would fain be welded 
with thee ; defyingly I worship thee ! ” 

“ The boat ! the boat ! ” cried Starbuck, “ look at thy boat, 
old man ! ” 

Ahab’s harpoon, the one forged at Perth’s fire, remained 
firmly lashed in its conspicuous crotch, so that it projected 
’ beyond his whale-boat’s bow ; but the sea that had stove 
its bottom had caused the loose leather sheath to drop off ; 
and from the keen steel barb there now came a levelled 
flame of pale, forked fire. As the silent harpoon burned 
there like a serpent’s tongue, Starbuck grasped Ahab by 
the arm — “ God, God is against thee, old man ; forbear ! 
’tis an ill voyage ! ill begun, ill continued ; let me square 
the yards, while we may, old man, and make a fair 
wind of it homeward, to go on a better voyage than 
this.” 

Overhearing Starbuck, the panic-stricken crew instantly 
ran to the braces — though not a sail was left aloft. For the 
moment all the aghast mate’s thoughts seemed theirs; 
they raised a half mutinous cry. But dashing the rattling 
lightning links to the deck, and snatching the burning har- 
poon, Ahab waved it like a torch among them ; swearing to 


474 


MOBY DICK. 


transfix with it the first sailor that hut cast loose a rope’s 
end. Petrified by his aspect, and still more shrinking from 
the fiery dart that he held, the men fell back in dismay, and 
Ahab again spoke : — 

“ All your oaths to hunt the White Whale are as binding 
as mine ; and heart, soul, and body, lungs and life, old Ahab 
is bound. And that ye may know to what tune this heart 
beats ; look ye here ; thus I blow out the last fear ! ” 
And with one blast of his breath he extinguished the 
flame. 

As in the hurricane that sweeps the plain, men fly the 
neighbourhood of some lone, gigantic elm, whose height 
and strength but render it so much the more unsafe, because 
so much the more a mark for thunderbolts ; so at those last 
words of Ahab’s many of the mariners did run from him in 
a terror of dismay. 


CHAPTER CXX. 

THE DECK TOWARDS THE END OF THE FIRST NIGHT WATCH. 

Ahab standing by the helm. Star buck approaching him. 

“We must send down the main-top-sail yard, sir. The 
band is working loose, and the lee lift is half-stranded. 
Shall I strike it, sir ? ” 

“ Strike nothing ; lash it. If I had sky-sail poles, I’d sway 
them up now.” 

“ Sir ? — in God’s name ! — sir ?” 

“ Well.” 

“The anchors are working, sir. Shall I get them in- 
board?” 

“ Strike nothing, and stir nothing, but lash everything. 
The wind rises, but it has not got up to my table-lands yet. 
Quick, and see to it. — By masts and keels ! he takes me for 
the hunch- backed skipper of some coasting smack. Send 
down my maintop-sail yard ! Ho, gluepots ! Loftiest 
trucks were made for wildest winds, and this brain- truck 
of mine now sails amid the cloud-scud. Shall I strike that ? 
Oh, none but cowards send down their brain-trucks in 
tempest time. What a hooroosh aloft there ! I would e’en 
take it for sublime, did I not know that the colic is a noisy 
malady. Oh, t ke medicine, take medicine ! ” 


MOB Y DICK. 


475 


CHAPTER CXXI. 

MIDNIGHT. THE FORECASTLE BULWARKS. 

jStubb and Flask mounted on them , and passing additional 

lashings over the anchors there hanging. 

“ No, Stubb ; you may pound that knot there as much as 
you please, but you will never pound into me what you 
were just now saying. And how long ago is it since you 
said the very contrary ? Didn’t you once say that what- 
ever ship Ahab sails in, that ship should pay something 
extra on its insurance policy, just as though it were loaded 
with powder barrels aft and boxes of lucifers forward? 
Stop, now ; didn’t you say so ? ” 

“Well, suppose I did? What then? I’ve part changed 
my flesh since that time, why not my mind ? Besides, sup- 
posing we are loaded with powder barrels aft and lucifers 
forward ; how the devil could the lucifers get afire in this 
drenching spray here ? Why, my little man, you have pretty 
red hair, but you couldn’t get afire now. Shake yourself ; 
you’re Aquarius, or the water-bearer, Flask ; might fill pit- 
chers at your coat collar. Don’t you see, then, that for 
these extra risks the Marine Insurance companies have 
extra guarantees ? Here are hydrants, Flask. But hark, 
again, and I’ll answer ye the other thing. First take your 
leg off from the crown of the anchor here, though, so I can 
pass the rope ; now listen. What’s the mighty difference 
between holding a mast’s lightning-rod in the storm, and 
standing close by a mast that hasn’t got any lightning-rod 
at all in a storm ? Don’t you see, you timber-head, that no 
harm can come to the holder of the rod, unless the mast is 
first struck ? What are you talking about, then? Not one 
ship in a hundred carries rods, and Ahab, — aye, man, and 
all of us, — were in no more danger then, in iny poor opin- 
ion, than all the crews in ten thousand ships now sailing 
the seas. Why, you King- Post, you, I suppose you would 
have every man in the world go about with a small light- 
ning-rod running up the corner of his hat, like a militia 
officer’s skewered feather, and trailing behind like his sash. 
Why don’t ye be sensible, Flask ? it’s easy to be sensible ; 
why don’t ye, then ? any man with half an eye can be sen- 
sible.” 


476 


MOBY DICK . 


“ I don’t know that, Stubb. You sometimes find it rather 
hard.” 

“Yes, when a fellow’s soaked through, it’s hard to be 
sensible, that’s a fact. And I am about drenched with this 
spray. Never mind ; catch the turn there, and pass it. 
Seems to me we are lashing down these anchors now as if 
they were never going to be used again. Tying these two 
anchors here, Flask, seems like tying a man’s hands behind 
him. And what big generous hands they are, to be sure. 
These are your iron fists, hey ? What a hold they have, 
too ! I wonder, Flask, whether the world is anchored any- 
where ; if she is, she swings with an uncommon long cable, 
though. There, hammer that knot down, and we’ve done. 
So ; next to touching land, lighting on deck is the most 
satisfactory. 1 say, just wring out my jacket skirts, will 
ye? Thank ye. They laugh at long-togs so, Flask ; but 
seems to me, a long tailed coat ought always to be worn in 
all storms afloat. The tails tapering down that way, serve 
to carry off the water, d’ye see. Same with cocked hats ; 
the cocks form gable-end eave-troughs, Flask. No more 
monkey-jackets and tarpaulins for me; I must mount a 
swallow-tail and drive down a beaver ; so. Halloa ! whew ! 
there goes my tarpaulin overboard; Lord, Lord, that the 
winds that come from heaven should be so unmannerly ! 
This is a nasty night, lad.” 


- CHAPTER CXXIL 

MIDNIGHT ALOFT. THUNDER AND LIGHTNING. 

The main-top-sail yard . — Tashtego passing new lashings 
around it. 

“ Um, um, um. Stop that thunder ! Plenty too much 
thunder up here. What’s the use of thunder? LTm, um, 
um. We don’t want thunder; we want rum; give us a 
glass of rum. Um, um, um ! ” 


CHAPTER CXXIII. 

THE MUSKET. 

During the most violent shocks of the Typhoon, the man 
at the Pequod’s jawbone tiller had several times been reel- 


MOBY DICK. 


477 


ingly hurled to the deck by its spasmodic, motions, even 
though preventer tackles had been attached to it — for they 
were slack — because some play to the tiller was indispen- 
sable. 

In a severe gale like this, while the ship is but a tossed 
shuttle-cock to the blast, it is by no means uncommon to 
see the needles in the compasses, at intervals, go round and 
round. It was thus with the Pequod’s ; at almost every 
shock the helmsman had not failed to notice the whirling 
velocity with which they revolved upon the cards ; it is a 
sight that hardly any one can behold without some sort of 
unwonted emotion. 

Some hours after midnight, the Typhoon abated so much, 
that through the strenuous exertions of Starbuck and Stubb 
— one engaged forward and the other aft — the shivered 
remnants of the jib and fore and main-top-sails were cut 
adrift from the spars, and went eddying away to leeward, 
like the feathers of an albatross, which sometimes are cast 
to the winds when that storm- tossed bird is on the wing. 

The three corresponding new sails were now bent and 
reefed, and a storm-trysail was set further aft ; so that the 
ship soon went through the water with some precision 
again ; and the course — for the present, East-south-east — 
which he was to steer, if practicable, was once more given 
to the helmsman. For during the violence of the gale, he 
had only steered according to its vicissitudes. But as he 
was now bringing the ship as near her course as possible, 
watching the compass meanwhile, lo ! a good sign ! the 
wind seemed coming round astern; aye, the foul breeze 
became fair ! 

Instantly the yards were squared, to the lively song of 
“Ho! the fair wind! oh-he-yo , cheerly men!” the crew 
singing for joy, that so promising an event should so soon 
have falsified the evil portents preceding it. 

In compliance with the standing order of his comman- 
der — to report immediately, and at every one of the twenty 
four hours, any decided change in the affairs of the deck, — 
Starbuck had no sooner trimmed the yards to the breeze — 
however reluctantly and gloomily, — than he mechanically 
went below to apprise Captain Ahab of the circumstance. 

Ere knocking at his state-room, he involuntarily paused 
before it a moment. The cabin lamp — taking long swings 
this way and that — was burning fitfully, and casting fitful 
shadows upon the old man’s bolted door,— a thin one, with 


478 


MOBY DICK. 


fixed blinds inserted, in place of upper panels. The isolated 
subterraneousness of the cabin made a certain humming 
silence to reign there, though it was hooped round by all 
the roar of the elements. The loaded muskets in the rack 
were shiningly revealed, as they stood upright against the 
forward bulkhead. Starbuck was an honest, upright man ; 
but out of Starbuck’s heart, at that instant when he saw 
the muskets, there strangely evolved an evil thought ; but 
so blent with its neutral or good accompaniments that for 
the instant he hardly knew it for itself. 

“He would have shot me once,” he murmured, “yes, 
there’s the very musket that he pointed at me ; — that one 
with the studded stock ; let me touch it — lift it. Strange, 
that I, who have handled so many deadly lances, strange, 
that I should shake so now. Loaded? I must see. Aye, 
aye ; and powder in the pan ; — that’s not good. Best spill 
it ? — wait. I’ll cure myself of this. I’ll hold the musket 
boldly while I think. — I come to report a fair wind to him. 
But how fair ? Fair for death and doom, — that's fair for 
Moby Dick. It’s a fair wind that’s only fair for that ac- 
cursed fish. The very tube he pointed at me ! — the very 
one ; this one — I hold it here ; he would have killed me 
with the very thing I handle now. — Aye and he would fain 
kill all his crew. Does he not say he will not strike his 
spars to any gale ? Has he not dashed his heavenly quad- 
rant? and in these same perilous seas, gropes he not his 
way by mere dead reckoning of the error-abounding log ? 
and in this very Typhoon, did he not swear that he would 
have no lightning-rods ? But shall this crazed old man be 
tamely suffered to drag a whole ship’s company down to 
doom with him ? — Yes, it would make him the wilful mur- 
derer of thirty men and more, if this ship comes to any 
deadly harm ; and come to deadly harm, my soul swears 
this ship will, if Ahab have his way. If, then, he were this 
instant — put aside, that crime would not be his. Ha ! is he 
muttering in his sleep? Yes, just there, — in there, he’s 
sleeping. Sleeping ? aye, but still alive, and soon awake 
again. I can’t withstand thee, then, old man. Not reason- 
ing ; not remonstrance ; not entreaty wilt thou hearken to ; 
all this thou scornest. Flat obedience to thy own flat com- 
mands, this is all thou breathest. Aye, and say’st the men 
have vow’d thy vo w ; say’st all of us are Ahabs. Great God 
forbid ! — But is there no other way ? no lawful way ? — Make 
him a prisoner to be taken home ? What ! hope to wrest 


MOB Y DICK. 


479 


this old man’s living power from his own living hands ? 
Only a fool would try it. Say he were pinioned even; 
knotted all over with ropes and hawsers ; chained down to 
ring-bolts on this cabin floor ; he would be more hideous 
than a caged tiger, then. I could not endure the sight ; 
could not possibly fly his how lings ; all comfort, sleep itself, 
inestimable reason would leave me on the long intolerable 
voyage. What, then, remains ? The land is hundreds of 
leagues away, and locked Japan the nearest. I stand alone 
here upon an open sea, with two oceans and a whole con- 
tinent between me and law. — Aye, aye, ’tis so. — Is heaven 
a murderer when its lightning strikes a would-be murderer 
in his bed, tindering sheets and skin together? — And would 

I be a murderer, then, if ” and slowly, stealthily, and 

half sideways looking, he placed the loaded musket’s end 
against the door. 

“ On this level, Ahab’s hammock swings within : his head 
this way. A touch, and Starbuck may survive to hug his 
wife and child again. — Oh Mary ! Mary ! — boy ! boy ! boy ! 
— But if I wake thee not to death, old man, who can tell to 
what unsounded deeps Starbuck’s body this day week may 
sink, with all the crew ! Great God, where art thou ? Shall 

I ? shall I ! The wind has gone down and shifted, sir ; 

the fore and main topsails are reefed and set ; she heads her 
course.” 

“ Stern all ! Oh Moby Dick, I clutch thy heart at last ! ” 

Such were the sounds that now came hurtling from out 
the old man’s tormented sleep, as if Starbuck’s voice had 
caused the long dumb dream to speak. 

The yet levelled musket shook like a drunkard’s arm 
against the panel; Starbuck seemed wrestling with an 
angel ; but turning from the door, he placed the death- tube 
in its rack, and left the place. 

“ He’s too sound asleep, Mr. Stubb ; go thou down, and 
wake him, and tell him. I must see to the deck here. Thou 
know’st what to say.” 


CHAPTER CXXIY. 


THE NEEDLE. 

Next morning the not-yet-subsided sea rolled in long slow 
billows of mighty bulk, and striving in the Pequod’s gurg- 
ling track, pushed her on like giants’ palms outspread. The 


480 


MOBY DICK. 


strong, nnstaggering breeze abounded so, that sky and air 
seemed vast outbellying sails; the whole world boomed 
before the wind. Muffled in the full morning light, the in- 
visible sun was only known by the spread intensity of his 
place ; where his bayonet rays moved on in stacks. Em- 
blazonings, as of crowned Babylonian kings and queens, 
reigned over everything. The sea was as a crucible of mol- 
ten gold, that bubblingly leaps with light and heat. 

Long maintaining an enchanted silence, Ahab stood apart ; 
and every time the tetering ship loweringly pitched down 
her bowsprit, he turned to eye the bright sun’s rays pro- 
duced ahead ; and when she profoundly settled by the stern, 
he turned behind, and saw the sun’s rearward place, and 
how the same yellow rays were blending with his undeviat- 
ing wake. 

“ Ha, ha, my ship ! thou mightest well be taken now for 
the sea-chariot of the sun. Ho, ho ! all ye nations before my 
prow, I bring the sun to ye ! Yoke on the further billows ; 
hallo! a tandem, I drive the sea ! ” 

But suddenly reined back by some counter thought, he 
hurried towards the helm, huskily demanding how the ship 
was heading. 

“ East-sou-east, sir,” said the frightened steersman. 

“ Thou liest ! ” smiting him with his clenched fist. “ Head- 
ing East at this hour in the morning, and the sun astern ? ” 

Upon this every soul was confounded ; for the phenome- 
non just then observed by Ahab had unaccountably escaped 
every one else ; but its very blinding palpableness must have 
been the cause. 

Thrusting his head half way into the binnacle, Ahab 
caught one glimpse of the compass ; his uplifted arm slowly 
Ml ; for a moment he almost seemed to stagger. Standing 
behind him Starbuck looked, and lo ! the two compasses 
pointed East, and the Pequod was as infallibly going West, 

But ere the first wild alarm could get out abroad among 
the crew, the old man with a rigid laugh exclaimed, “ I have 
it! It has happened before. Mr. Starbuck, last night’s 
thunder turned our compasses — that’s all. Thou "hast 
before now heard of such a thing, I take it.” 

“ Aye ; but never before has it happened to me, sir,” said 
the pale mate, gloomily. 

Here, it must needs.be said, that accidents like this have 
in more than one case occurred to ships in violent storms. 
The magnetic energy, as developed in the mariner’s needle, 

y 


MOBY DICK. 


481 


is, as all know, essentially one with the electricity beheld in 
heaven ; hence it is not to he much marvelled at, that such 
things should be. In instances where the lightning has 
actually struck the vessel, so as to smite down some of the 
spars and rigging, the effect upon the needle has at times 
been still more fatal ; all its loadstone virtue being annihi- 
lated, so that the before magnetic steel was of no more use 
than an old wife’s knitting needle. But in either case, the 
needle never again, of itself, recovers the original virtue thus 
marred or lost ; and if the binnacle compasses he affected, 
the same fate reaches all the others that may be in the ship ; 
even were the lowermost one inserted into the kelson. 

Deliberately standing before the binnacle, and eyeing the 
transported compasses, the old man, with the sharp of his 
extended hand, now took the precise bearing of the sun, 
and satisfied that the needles were exactly inverted, shouted 
out his orders for the ship’s course to be changed accord- 
ingly. The yards were hard up ; and once more the Pequod 
thrust her undaunted bows into the opposing wind, for the 
supposed fair one had only been juggling her. 

Meanwhile, whatever were his own secret thoughts, Star- 
buck said nothing, hut quietly he issued all requisite orders ; 
while Stubb and Flask — who in some small degree seemed 
then to be sharing his feelings — likewise unmurmuringly 
acquiesced. As for the men, though some of them lowly 
rumbled, their fear of Ahab was greater than their fear of 
Fate. But as ever before, the pagan harpooners remained 
almost wholly unimpressed ; or if impressed, it was only 
with a certain magnetism shot into their congenial hearts 
from inflexible Ahab’s. 

For a space the old man walked the deck in rolling reveries. 
But chancing to slip with his ivory heel, he saw the crushed 
copper sight-tubes of the quadrant he had the day before 
dashed to the deck. 

“ Thou poor, proud heaven-gazer and sun’s pilot ! yes- 
terday I wrecked thee, and to-day the compasses would 
feign have wrecked me. So, so. But Ahab is lord over 
the level loadstone yet. Mr. Starbuck — a lance without a 
pole ; a top-maul, and the smallest of the sail-maker’s needles. 
Quick!” 

Accessory, perhaps, to the impulse dictating the thing 
he was now about to do, were certain prudential motives, 
whose object might have been to revive the spirits of his 
crew by a stroke of his subtile skill, in a matter so wondrous 

81 


482 


MOBY DICK. 


as that of the inverted compasses. Besides, the old man 
well knew that to steer by transported needles, though 
clumsily practicable, was not a thing to be passed over by 
superstitious sailors, without some sliudderings and evil 
portents. 

“Men,” said he, steadily turning upon the crew, as the 
mate handed him the things he had demanded, “ my men, 
the thunder turned old Ahab’s needles ; but out of this bit 
of steel Ahab can make one of his own, that will point as 
true as any.” 

Abashed glances of servile wonder were exchanged by 
the sailors, as this was said ; and with fascinated eyes they 
awaited whatever magic might follow. But Star buck looked 
away. 

With a blow from the top-maul Ahab knocked off the 
steel head of the lance, and then . handing to the mate the 
long iron rod remaining, bade him hold it upright, without 
its touching the deck. Then, with the maul, after re- 
peatedly smiting the upper end of this iron rod, he placed 
the blunted needle endwise on the top of it, and less strongly 
hammered that, several times, the mate # still holding the 
rod as before. Then going through some small strange 
motions with it — whether indispensable to the magnetising 
of the steel, or merely intended to augment the awe of the 
crew, is uncertain — he called for linen thread ; and moving 
to the binnacle, slipped out the two reversed needles there, 
and horizontally suspended the sail-needle by its middle, 
over one of the compass-cards. At first, the steel went 
round and round, quivering and vibrating at either end ; 
but at last it settled to its place, when Ahab, who had been 
intently watching for this result, stepped frankly back from 
the binnacle, and pointing his stretched arm towards it, 
exclaimed, — “ Look ye, for yourselves, if Ahab be not lord 
of the level loadstone ! The sun is East, and that compass 
swears it ! ” 

One after another they peered in, for nothing but their 
own eyes could persuade such ignorance as theirs, and one 
after another they slunk away. 

In his fiery eyes of scorn and triumph, you then saw Ahab 
in all ,his fatal pride. 


MOB Y DICK. 


483 


CHAPTER CXXV. 

THE LOG AND LINE. 

W hile now the fated Peqnod had been so long afloat this 
voyage, the log and line had but very seldom been in use. 
Owing to a confident reliance upon other means of deter- 
mining the vessel’s place, some merchantmen, and many 
whalemen, especially when cruising, wholly neglect to heave 
the log ; though at the same time, and frequently more for 
form’s sake than anything else, regularly putting down up- 
on the customary slate the course steered by the ship, as well 
as the presumed average rate of progression every hour. It 
had been thus with the Pequod. The wooden reel and an- 
gular log attached hung, long untouched, just beneath the 
railing of the after bulwarks. Rains and spray had damped 
it ; sun and wind had warped it ; all the elements had 
combined to rot a thing that hung so idly. But heedless of 
all this, his mood seized Ahab, as he happened to glance 
upon the reel, not many hours after the magnet scene, and he 
remembered how his quadrant was no more, and recalled 
his frantic oath about the level log and line. The ship was 
sailing plungingly ; astern the billows rolled in riots. 

“ Forward, there ! Heave the log ! ” 

Two seamen came. The golden-hued Tahitian and 
the grizzly Manxman. “Take the reel, one of ye, I’ll 
heave.” 

They went towards the extreme stern, on the ship’s lee 
side, where the deck, with the oblique energy of the wind, 
was now almost dipping into the creamy, sidelong-rushing 
sea. 

The Manxman took the reel, and holding it high up by the 
projecting. handle-ends of the spindle, round which the spool 
of line revolved, so stood with the angular log hanging down- 
wards, till Ahab advanced to him. 

Ahab stood before him, and was lightly unwinding some 
thirty or forty turns to form a preliminary hand-coil to toss 
overboard, when the old Manxman, who was intently eye- 
ing both him and the line, made bold to speak. 

“ Sir, I mistrust it ; this line looks far gone, long heat 
and wet have spoiled it.” 


484 


MOBY DICK. 


“ ’Twill hold, old gentleman. Long heat and wet, have 
they spoiled thee ? Thou seem’st to hold. Or, truer per- 
haps, life holds thee ; not thou it.” 

“I hold the spool, sir. But just as my captain says. 
With these grey hairs of mine ’tis not worth while disputing, 
’specially with a superior, who’ll ne’er confess.” 

“ What’s that ? There now’s a patched professor in Queen 
Nature’s granite-founded College ; but methinks he’s too 
subservient. Where wert thou born ? ” 

“ In the little rocky Isle of Man, sir.” 

“Excellent ! Thou’st hit the world by that.” 

“ I know not, sir, but I was born there.” 

“ In the Isle of Man, hey ? W ell, the other way, it’s good. 
Here’s a man from Man ; a man born in once independent 
Man, and now unmanned of Man ; which is sucked in — by 
what? TTp with the reel! The dead, blind wall butts all 
inquiring heads at last. Up with it ! So.” 

The log was heaved. The loose coils rapidly straight- 
ened out in a long dragging line astern, and then, instantly, 
the reel began to whirl. In turn, jerkingly raised and low- 
ered by the rolling billows, the towering resistance of the 
log caused the old reelman to stagger strangely. 

“ Hold hard!” 

Snap ! the overstrained line sagged down in one long 
festoon ; the tugging log was gone. 

“ I crush the quadrant, the thunder turns the needles, and 
now the mad sea parts the log-line. But Ahab can mend 
all. Haul in here, Tahitian ; reel up, Manxman. And look 
ye, let the carpenter make another log, and mend thou the 
line. See to it.” 

“ There he goes now ; to him nothing’s happened ; but to 
me, the skewer seems loosening out of the middle of the 
world. Haul in, haul in, Tahitian ; these lines run whole, 
and whirling out ! come in broken, and dragging slow. Ha, 
Pip ! come to help ; eh, Pip ? ” 

“Pip? whom call ye Pip? Pip jumped from the whale- 
boat. Pip’s missing. Let’s see now if ye haven’t fished 
him up here, fishermen. It drags hard ; I guess he’s holding 
on. Jerk him, Tahiti ! Jerk him off ; we haul in no cowards 
here. Ho ! there’s his arm just breaking water. A hatchet ! 
a hatchet ! cut it off — we haul in no cowards here. Captain 
Ahab ! sir, sir ! here’s Pip, trying to get on board again.” 

“ Peace, thou crazy loon,” cried the Manxman, seizing him 
by the arm. “ Away from the quarter-deck ! ” 


MOBY DICK. 


485 


“ The greater idiot ever scolds the lesser,” muttered Ahah, 
advancing. “ Hands off from that holiness ! Where sayest 
thou Pip was, boy ? ” 

“ Astern there, sir, astern ! Lo, lo ! ” 

“ And who art thou, boy ? T see not my reflection in the 
vacant pupils of thy eyes.” Oh God ! that man should be a 
thing for immortal souls to sieve through ! Who art thou, 
boy ? ” 

“ Bell-boy, sir ; ship’s-crier ; ding, dong, ding ! Pip ! Pip ! 
Pip ! One hundred pounds of clay reward for Pip ; five feet 
high — looks cowardly — quickest known by that ! Ding, 
dong, ding ! Who’s seen Pip the coward ? ” 

“There can be no hearts above the snowline. Oh, ye 
frozen heavens ! look down here. Ye did beget this luckless 
child, and have abandoned him, ye creative libertines. 
Here, boy ; Ahab’s cabin shall be Pip’s home henceforth, 
while Ahat) lives. Thou touches t my inmost centre, boy ; 
thou art tied to me by cords woven of my heart-strings. 
Come, let’s down.” 

“ What’s this ? here’s velvet shark-skin,” intently gazing 
at Ahab’s hand, and feeling it. “ Ah, now, had poor Pip but 
felt so kind a thing as this, perhaps he had ne’er been lost ! 
This seems to me, sir, as a man- rope; something that weak 
souls may hold by. Oh, sir, let old Perth now come and 
rivet these two hands together; the black one with the 
white, for I will not let this go.” 

“ Oh, boy, nor will I thee, unless I should thereby drag 
thee to worse horrors than are here. Come, then, to my 
cabin. Lo ! ye believers in gods all goodness, and in man 
all ill, lo you ! see the omniscient gods oblivious of suffering 
man ; and man, though idiotic, and knowing not what he 
does, yet full of the sweet things of love and gratitude. 
Come ! I feel prouder leading thee by thy black hand, than 
though I grasped an Emperor’s ! ” 

“ There go two daft ones now,” muttered the old Manx- 
man. “ One daft with strength, the other daft with weak- 
ness. But here’s the end of the rotten line — all dripping 
too. Mend it, eh ? I think we had best have a new line 
altogether. I’ll see Mr. Stubb about it.” 


486 


MOBY DICK . 


CHAPTER CXXVI. 

THE LIFE-BUOY. 

Steering now south-eastward by Ahab’s levelled steel, 
and her progress solely determined by Ahab’s level log and 
line ; the Pequod held on her path towards the Equator. 
Making so long a passage through such unfrequented 
waters, descrying no ships, and ere long, sideways impelled 
by unvarying trade winds, over waves monotonously mild ; 
all these seemed the strange calm things preluding some 
riotous and desperate scene. 

At last, when the ship drew near to the outskirts, as it 
were, of the Equatorial fishing-ground, and in the deep 
darkness that goes before the dawn, was sailing by a cluster 
of rocky islets; the watch — then headed by Flask — was 
startled by a cry so plaintively wild and unearthly — like 
half-articulated wailings of the ghosts of all Herod’s mur- 
dered Innocents — that one and all, they started from their 
reveries, and for the space of some moments stood, or sat, 
or leaned all transfixedly listening, like the carved Roman 
slave, while that wild cry remained within hearing. The 
Christian or civilized part of the crew said it was mermaids, 
and shuddered ; but the pagan harpooneers remained unap- 
palled. Yet the grey Manxman — the oldest mariner of all 
— declared that the wild thrilling sounds that were, heard, 
were the voices of newly drowned men in the sea. 

Below in his hammock, Ahab did not hear of this till grey 
dawn, when he came to the deck ; it was then recounted to 
him by Flask not unaccompanied with hinted dark mean- 
ings. He hollowly laughed, and thus explained the 
wonder. 

Those rocky islands the ship had passed were the resort 
of great numbers of seals, and some young seals that had 
lost their dams, or some dams that "had lost their cubs, 
must have risen nigh the ship and kept company with her, 
crying and sobbing with their human sort of wail. But 
this only the more affected some of them, because most 
mariners cherish a very superstitious feeling about seals, 
arising not only from their peculiar tones when in distress, 
but also from the human look of their round heads and 


MOBY DICK. 


487 


semi-intelligent faces, seen peeringly uprising from the 
water alongside. In the sea, under certain circumstances, 
seals have more than once been mistaken for men. 

But the bodings of the crew were destined to receive a 
most plausible confirmation in the fate of one of their 
number that morning. At sunrise this man went from his 
hammock to his mast-head at the fore ; and whether it was 
that he was not yet half waked from his sleep (for sailors 
sometimes go aloft in a transition state), whether it was 
thus with the man, there is now no telling ; but, be that as 
it may, he had not been long at his perch, when a cry was 
heard — a cry and a rushing — and looking up, they saw a 
falling phantom in the air ; and looking down, a little tossed 
heap of white bubbles in the blue of the sea. 

The life-buoy — a long slender cask — was dropped from 
the stern, where it always hung obedient to a cunning 
spring ; but no hand rose to seize it, and the sun having 
long beat upon this cask it had shrunken, so that it slowly 
filled, and the parched wood also filled at its every pore ; 
and the studded iron-bound cask followed the sailor to the 
bottom, as if to yield him his pillow, though in sooth but 
a hard one. 

And thus the first man of the Pequod that mounted the 
mast to look out for the White Whale, on the White 
Whale’s own peculiar ground ; that man was swallowed up 
in the deep. But few, perhaps, thought of that at the time. 
Indeed, in some sort, they were not grieved at this event, at 
least as a portent ; for they regarded it, not as a foreshad- 
owing of evil in the future, but as the fulfilment of an evil 
already presaged. They declared that now they knew the 
reason of those wild shrieks they had heard the night be- 
fore. But again the old Manxman said nay. 

The lost life-buoy was now to be replaced ; Starbuck was 
directed to see to it ; but as no cask of sufficient lightness 
could be found, and as in the feverish eagerness of what 
seemed the approaching crisis of the voyage, all hands were 
impatient of any toil but what was directly connected with 
its final end, whatever that might prove to be ; therefore, 
they were going to leave the ship’s stern unprovided with 
a buoy, when by certain strange signs and innuendoes Quee- 
queg hinted a hint concerning his coffin. 

“ A life-buoy of a coffin ! ” cried Starbuck, starting. 

“ Kather queer, that, I should say,” said Stubb. 


488 


MOB Y DICK. 


“ It will make a good enough one,” said Flask, “ the car- 
penter here can arrange it easily.” 

“ Bring it up ; there’s nothing else for it,” said Starbuck, 
after a melancholy pause. “ Rig it, carpenter ; do not look 
at me so — the coffin, I mean. Dost thou hear me ? Rig it.” 

“ And shall I nail down the lid, sir ? ” moving his hand as 
with a hammer. 

“ Aye.” 

“ And shall I caulk the seams, sir ? ” moving his hand as 
with a caulking-iron. 

“ Aye.” 

“ And shall I then pay over the same with pitch, sir ? ” 
moving his hand as with a pitch-pot. 

“ Away ! what possesses thee to this ? Make a life-buoy 
of the coffin, and no more. — Mr. Stubb, Mr. Flask, come 
forward with me.” 

“ He goes off in a huff. The whole he can endure ; at the 
parts he baulks. Now I don’t like this. I make a leg for 
Captain Ahab, and he wears it like a gentleman ; but I make 
a bandbox for Queequeg, and he won’t put his head into it. 
Are all my pains to go for nothing with that coffin ? And 
now I’m ordered to make a life-buoy of it. It’s like turning 
an old coat ; going to bring the flesh on the other side now. 
I don’t like this cobbling sort of business — I don’t like it 
at all ; its undignified ; it’s not my place. Let tinkers’ brats 
do tinkerings ; we are their betters. I like to take in hand 
none but clean, virgin, fair-and-square mathematical jobs, 
something that regularly begins at the beginning, and is at 
the middle when midway, and comes to an end at the con- 
clusion ; not a cobbler’s job, that’s at an end in the middle, 
and at the beginning at the end. It’s the old woman’s tricks 
to be giving cobbling jobs. Lord ! what an affection all old 
women have for tinkers. I know an old woman of sixty- 
five who ran away with a bald-headed young tinker once. 
And that’s the reason I never would work for lonely widow 
old women ashore, when I kept my job-shop in the Vine- 
yard ; they might have taken it into their lonely old heads 
to run off with me. But heigh-ho ! there are no caps at sea 
but snow-caps. Let me see. Nail down the lid ; caulk the 
seams ; pay over the same with pitch ; batten them down 
tight, and hang it with the snap-spring over the ship’s stern. 
Were ever such things done before with a coffin? Some 
superstitious old carpenters, now, would be tied up in the 
rigging, ere they would do the job. But I’m made of knotty 


MOBY DICK. 


489 


Aroostook hemlock ; I don’t budge. Cruppered with a 
coffin ! Sailing about with a grave-yard tray ! But never 
mind. We workers in woods make bridal-bedsteads and 
card- tables, as well as coffins and hearses. We work by 
the month, or by the job, or by the profit ; not for us to ask 
the why and wherefore of our work, unless it be too con- 
founded cobbling, and then we stash it if we can. Hem ! 
I’ll do the job, now, tenderly. I’ll have me — let’s see — how 
many in the ship’s company, all told ? But I’ve forgotten. 
Any way, I’ll have me thirty separate, Turk’s-headed life- 
lines, each three feet long hanging all round to the coffin. 
Then, if the hull go down, there’ll be thirty lively fellows 
all fighting for one coffin, a sight not seen very often beneath 
the sun ! Come hammer, caulking-iron, pitcli-pot, and marl- 
ing-spike ! Let’s to it.” 


CHAPTER CXXVII. 

THE DECK. 

The coffin laid upon two line-tubs , between the vice-bench and 
the open hatchway ; the Carpenter caulking its seams ; the 
string of twisted oakum slowly unwinding from a large 
roll of it placed in the bosom of his frock. — Ahab comes 
slowly from the cabin- gangway, and hears Pip following 
him. 

“ Back, lad ; I will be with ye again presently. He goes ! 
Not this hand complies with my humour more genially than 
that boy. — Middle aisle of a church ! What’s here ? ” 
“Life-buoy, sir. Mr. Starbuck’s orders. Oh, look, sir ! 
Beware the hatchway ! ” 

“Thank ye, man. Thy coffin lies handy to the vault.” 

“ Sir ? The hatchway'? oh ! So it does, sir, so it does.” 
“ Art not thou the leg-maker ? Look, did not this stump 
come from thy shop ? ” 

“ I believe it did, sir ; does the ferrule stand, sir ? ” 

“ Well enough. But art thou not also the undertaker ? ” 
“ Aye, sir ; I patched up this thing here as a coffin for 
Queequeg ; but they’ve set me now to turning it into some- 
thing else.” 

“ Then tell me \ art thou not an arrant, all-grasping, 


490 


MOBY DICK. 


intermeddling, monopolising, heathenish old scamp, to be 
one day making legs, and the next day coffins to clap them 
in, and yet again life-buoys out of those same coffins ? 
Thou art as unprincipled as the gods, and as much of a 
jack-of-all-trades.” 

“ But I do not mean anything, sir. I do as I do.” 

“The gods again. Hark ye, dost thou not ever sing 
working about a coffin ? The Titans, they say, hummed 
snatches when chipping out the craters for volcanoes ; and 
the grave-digger in the play sings, spade in hand. Dost 
thou never ? ” 

“ Sing, sir ? Do I sing ? Oh, I’m indifferent enough, sir, 
for that ; but the reason why the grave-digger made music 
must have been because there was none in his spade, sir. 
But the caulking mallet is full of it. Hark to it.” 

“Aye, and that’s because the lid there’s a sounding- 
board ; and what in all things makes the sounding-board 
is this — there’s naught beneath. And yet, a coffin with a 
body in it rings pretty much the same, Carpenter. Hast 
thou ever helped carry a bier, and heard the coffin knock 
against the churchyard gate going in ? ” 

“ Faith, sir, I’ve ” 

“ Faith ? What’s that ? ” 

“ Why, faith, sir, it’s only a sort of exclamation-like — 
that’s all sir.” 

Um, um; goon.” 

“ I was about to say, sir, that ” 

“ Art thou a silk- worm ? Dost thou spin thy own shroud 
out of thyself? Look at thy bosom ! Dispatch! and get 
these traps out of sight.” 

“ He goes aft. That was sudden, now ; but squalls come 
sudden in hot latitudes. I’ve heard that the Isle of 
Albemarle, one of the Gallipagos, is cut by the Equator 
right in the middle. Seems to me some sort of Equator 
cuts yon old man, too, right in his middle. He’s always 
under the Line — fiery hot, I tell ye ! He’s looking this way 
— come, oakum ; quick. Here we go again. This wooden 
mallet is the cork, and I’m the professor of musical glasses 
— tap, tap ! ” 

(Ahab to Jmnself.) 

“ There’s a sight ! There’s a sound ! The grey-headed 
woodpecker tapping a hollow tree ! Blind and dumb 
might well be envied now. See ! that thing rests on two 
line-tubs, full of tow-lines. A most malicious wag, that 


MOBY DICK. 


491 


fellow. Rat-tat ! So man’s seconds tick ! Oh ! how im- 
material are all materials ! What things real are there, 
hut imponderable thoughts ? Here now’s the very dreaded 
symbol of grim death, by a mere hap, made the expressive 
sign of the help and hope of most endangered life. A life- 
buoy of a coffin ! Does it go further ? Can it be that in some 
spiritual sense the coffin is, after all, but an immortality- 
preserver ! I’ll think of that. But no. So far gone am I 
in the dark side of earth, that its other side, the theoretic 
bright one, seems but uncertain twilight to me. Will ye 
never have done, Carpenter, with that accursed sound ? I 
go below ; let me not see that thing here when I return 
again. Now, then, Pip, we’ll talk this over; I do suck 
most wondrous philosophies from thee ! Some unknown 
conduits from the unknown worlds must empty into thee ! ” 


CHAPTER CXXVIII. 

THE PEQUOD MEETS THE RACHEL. 

Next day, a large ship, the Rachel, was descried, bearing 
directly down upon the Pequod, all her spars thickly clus- 
tering with men. At the time the Pequod was making 
good speed through the water ; but as the broad- winged 
windward stranger shot nigh to her, the boastful sails all 
fell together as blank bladders that are burst, and all life 
fled from the smitten hull. 

“ Bad news , she brings bad news,” muttered the old Manx- 
man. But ere her commander, who, with trumpet to mouth, 
stood up in his boat ; ere he could hopefully hail, Ahab’s 
voice was heard. 

“ Hast seen the White Whale ? ” 

“ Aye, yesterday. Have ye seen a whale-boat adrift ? ” 

Throttling his joy, Ahab negatively answered this unex- 
pected question ; and would then have fain boarded the 
stranger, when the stranger captain himself, having stopped 
his vessel’s way, was seen descending her side. A few keen 
pulls, and his boathook soon clinched the Pequod’s main- 
chains, and he sprang to the deck. Immediately he was 
recognised by Ahab for a Nantucketer he knew. But no 
formal salutation was exchanged. 

“ Where was he ?— not killed ! — not killed ! ” cried Ahab, 
closely advancing. “ How was it ? ” 


492 


MOBY DICK. 


It seemed that somewhat late on the afternoon of the day- 
previous, while three of the stranger’s boats were engaged 
with a shoal of whales, which had led them some four or 
five miles from the ship ; and while they were yet in swift 
chase to windward, the white hump and head of Moby Dick 
had suddenly loomed up out of the blue water, not very far 
to leeward ; whereupon, the fourth rigged boat — a reserved 
one — had been instantly lowered in chase. After a keen 
sail before the wind, this fourth boat — the swiftest keeled 
of all — seemed to have succeeded in fastening — at least, as 
well as the man at the masthead could tell anything about 
it. In the distance he saw the diminished dotted boat ; and 
then a swift gleam of bubbling white water ; and after that 
nothing more ; whence it was concluded that the stricken 
whale must have indefinitely run away with his pursuers, 
as often happens. There was some apprehension, but no 
positive alarm, as yet. The recall signals were placed in the 
rigging ; darkness came on ; and forced to pick up her three 
far to windward boats — ere going in quest of the fourth one 
in the precisely opposite direction — the ship had not only 
been necessitated to leave that boat to its fate till near mid- 
night, but for the time, to increase her distance from it. 
But the rest of her crew being at last safe aboard, she 
crowded all sail-r-stunsail on stunsail — after the missing 
boat ; kindling a fire in her try-pots for a beacon ; and every 
other man aloft on the look-out. But though when she had 
thus sailed a sufficient distance to gain the presumed place of 
the absent ones when last seen, though she then paused to 
lower her spare boats to pull all around her ; and not 
finding anything, had again dashed on ; again paused, and 
lowered her boats ; and though she had thus continued doing 
till daylight ; yet not the least glimpse of the missing keel 
had been seen. 

The story told, the stranger Captain immediately went 
on to reveal his object in boarding the Pequod. He desired 
that ship to unite with his own in the search ; by sailing 
over the sea some four or five miles apart, on parallel lines, 
and so sweeping a double horizon, as it were. 

“ I will wager something now,” whispered Stubb to Flask, 
“ that some one in that missing boat wore off that Captain’s 
best coat ; mayhap, his watch— -he’s so cursed anxious to 
get it back. Who ever heard of two pious whale-ships cruis- 
ing after one missing whale-boat in the height of the whale- 
ing season ? See, Flask, only see how pale he looks — pale 


MOBY DICK. 493 

in the very buttons of his eyes — look — it wasn’t the coat — • 
it must have been the ” 

“My boy, my own boy is among them. For God’s sake 
— I beg, I conjure ” — here exclaimed the stranger Captain 
to Ahab, who thus far had but icily received his petition. 
“For eight-and-forty hours let me charter your ship — I will 
gladly pay for it, and roundly pay for it — if there be no 
other w'ay — for eight-and-forty hours only — only that — you 
must, oh, you must, and you shall do this thing.” 

“ His son ! ” cried Stubb, “ oh, it’s his son he’s lost ! I 
take back the coat and watch — what says Ahab ? We must 
save that boy.” 

“ He’s drowned with the rest on ’em, last night,” said the 
old Manx sailor standing behind them; “I heard; all of ye 
heard their spirits.” 

Now, as it shortly turned out, what made this incident of 
the Rachel’s the more melancholy, was the circumstance, 
that not only was one of the Captain’s sons among the num- 
ber of the missing boat’s crew ; but among the number of 
the other boat’s crews, at the same time, but on the other 
hand, separated from the ship during the dark vicissitudes 
of the chase, there had been still another son ; as that for a 
time, the wretched father was plunged to the bottom of the 
cruellest perplexity ; which was only solved for him by his 
chief mate’s instinctively adopting the ordinary procedure 
of a whale-ship in such emergencies, that is, when placed 
between jeopardised but divided boats, always to pick up 
the majority first. But the captain, for some unknown con- 
stitutional reason, had refrained from mentioning all this, 
and not till forced to it by Ahab’s iciness did he allude to 
his one yet missing boy ; a little lad, but twelve years old, 
whose father with the earnest but unmisgiving hardihood 
of a Nantucketer’s paternal love, had thus early sought to 
initiate him in the perils and wonders of a vocation almost 
immemorially the destiny of all his race. Nor does it un- 
frequently occur, that Nantucket captains will send a son 
of such tender age away from them for a protracted three 
or four years’ voyage in some other ship than their own : 
so that their first knowledge of a whaleman’s career shall 
be unenervated by any chance display of a father’s natural 
but untimely partiality, or undue apprehensiveness and 
concern. 

Meantime, now the stranger was still beseeching his poor 
boon of Ahab ; and Ahab still stood like an anvil, receiving 
every shock, but without the least quivering of his own. 


494 


MOBY DICK. 


“ I will not go,” said the stranger, “ till you say aye to 
me. Do to me as you would have me do to you in the like 
case. For you too have a boy, Captain Ahab — though but 
a child, and nestling safely at home now — a child of your 
old age too — Yes, yes, you relent ; I see it — run, run, men, 
now, and stand by to square in the yards.” 

“ Avast,” cried Ahab — “ touch not a rope-yarn ; ” then in 
a voice that prolongingly moulded every word — u Captain 
Gardiner, I will not do it. Even now I lose time. Good- 
bye, good-bye. God bless ye, man, and may I forgive my- 
self, but I must go. Mr. Starbuck, look at the binnacle 
watch, and in three minutes from this present instant warn 
off all strangers : then brace forward again, and let the 
ship sail as before.” 

Hurriedly turning, with averted face, he descended into 
his cabin, leaving the strange captain transfixed at this un- 
conditional and utter rejection of his so earnest suit. But 
starting from his enchantment, Gardiner silently hurried to 
the side ; more fell than stepped into his boat, and returned 
to his ship. 

Soon the two ships diverged their wakes ; and long as 
the strange vessel was in view, she was seen to yaw hither 
and thither at every dark spot, however small, on the sea. 
This way and that her yards were swung round ; starboard 
and larboard, she continued to tack ; now she beat against 
a head sea; and again it pushed her before it ; while all the 
while, her masts and yards were thickly clustered with 
men, as three tall cherry trees, when the hoys are cherrying 
among the houghs. 

But by her still halting course and winding, woful way, 
you plainly saw that this ship that so wept with spray, 
still remained without comfort. She was Rachel, weeping 
for her children, because they were not. 


CHAPTER CXXIX. 

THE CABIX. 

(Ahab moving to go on deck ; Pip catches him by the hand 
to follow) 

“ Lad, lad, I tell thee thou must not follow Ahab now. 
The hour is coming when Ahab would not scare thee from 
him, yet would not have thee by him. There is that in 


MOB Y DICK. 


495 


thee, poor lad, which I feel too curing to my malady. Like 
cures like; and for this hunt, my malady becomes my most 
desired health. Do thou abide below here, where they 
shall serve thee, as if thou wert the captain. Aye, lacl, 
thou shalt sit here in my own screwed chair; another 
screiv to it, thou must be.” 

“No, no, no! ye have not a whole body, sir ; do ye but 
use poor me for your one lost leg ; only tread upon me, 
sir ; I ask no more, so I remain a part of ye.” 

“ Oh ! spite of million villains, this makes me a bigot in 
the fadeless fidelity of man! — and a black ! and crazy ! — but 
methinks like-cures-like applies to him too ; he grows so 
sane again.” 

“ They tell me, sir, that Stub!) did once desert poor little 
Pip, whose drowned bones now show white, for all the 
blackness of his living skin. But I will never desert ye, 
sir, as Stubb did him. Sir, I must go with ye.” 

“ If thou speakest thus to me much more, Ahab’s purpose 
keels up in him. I tell thee no ; it cannot be.” 

“ Oh good master, master, master ! ” 

“ Weep so, and I w r ill murder thee ! have a care, for Ahab 
too is mad. Listen, and thou wilt often hear my ivory foot 
upon the deck, and still know that I am there. And now 
I quit thee. Thy hand ! — Met ! True art thou, lad, as the 
circumference to its centre. So : God for ever bless thee ; 
and if it come to that, — God for ever save thee, let what 
will befall.” 

(Ahab goes ; Pip steps one step forward .) 

“ Here he this instant stood ; I stand in his air, — but I’m 
alone. Now were even poor Pip here I could endure it, but 
he’s missing. Pip ! Pip ! Ding, dong, ding ! Who’s seen 
Pip? He must be up here; let’s try the door. What? 
neither lock, nor bolt, nor bar ; and yet there’s no opening 
it. It must be the spell ; he told me to stay here. Aye, 
and told me this screwed chair was mine. Here, then, I’ll 
seat me, against the transom, in the ship’s full middle, all 
her keel and her three masts before me. Here, our old 
sailors say, in their black seventy-fours great admirals 
sometimes sit at table, and lord it over rows of captains 
and lieutenants. Ha ! what’s this ? epaulets! epaulets ! the 
epaulets all come crowding ! Pass round the decanters ; glad 
to see ye ; fill up, monsieurs ! What an old feeling, now, when 
a black boy’s host to white men with gold lace upon their 


496 


MOBY DICK. 


coats! — Monsieurs, have ye seen one Pip? — a little negro 
lad, five feet high, hang-dog look, and cowardly! Jumped 
from a whale-boat once ; — seen him ? No ! Well then, fill 
up again, captains, and let’s drink shame upon all cowards ! 
I name no names. Shame upon them ! Put one foot 
upon the table. Shame upon all cowards. — Hist! above 
there, I hear ivory — Oh, master ! master ! I am indeed 
down-hearted when you walk over me. But here I’ll stay, 
though this stern strikes rocks ; and they bulge through ; 
and oysters come to join me.” 


CHAPTER CXXX. 

THE HAT. 

And now that at the proper time and place, after so long 
and wide a preliminary cruise, Aliab, — all other whaling 
waters swept — seemed to have chased his foe into an ocean- 
fold, to slay him the more securely there ; now, that he 
found himself hard by the very latitude and longitude 
where his tormenting wound had been inflicted ; now that 
a vessel had been spoken which on the very day preceding 
had actually encountered Moby Dick ; — and now that all 
his successive meetings with various ships contrastingly 
concurred to show the demoniac indifference with which 
the white whale tore his hunters, whether sinning or sinned 
against ; now it was that there lurked a something in the 
old man’s eyes, which it was hardly sufferable for feeble 
souls to see. As the unsetting polar star which through 
the livelong, arctic, six months’ night sustains its piercing, 
steady, central gaze ; so Ahab’s purpose now fixedly gleamed 
down upon the constant midnight of the gloomy crew. It 
domineered above them so, that all their bodings, doubts, 
misgivings, fears, were fain to hide beneath their souls, and 
not sprout forth a single spear or leaf. 

In this foreshadowing interval too, all humour, forced or 
natural, vanished. Stubb no more strove to raise a smile; 
Starbuck no more strove to check one. Alike, joy and 
sorrow, hope and fear, seemedr ground to finest dust, and 
powdered, for the time, in the clamped mortar of Ahab’s 
iron soul. Like machines, they dumbly moved about the 
deck, ever conscious that the old man’s despot eye was on 
them. 


MOBY DICK . 


497 


But did you deeply scan him in his more secret confi- 
dential hours ; when he thought no glance but one was on 
him ; then you would have seen that even as Ahab’s eyes 
so awed the crew’s, the inscrutable Parsee’s glance awed 
his ; or somehow, at least, in some wild way, at times af- 
fected it. Such an added, gliding strangeness began to in- 
vest the thin Fedallah now ; such ceaseless shudderings 
shook him ; that the men looked dubious at him ; half un- 
certain, as it seemed, whether indeed he were a mortal 
substance, or else a tremulous shadow cast upon the deck 
by some unseen being’s body. And that shadow was al- 
ways hovering there. For not by night, even, had Fedallah 
ever certainly been known to slumber, or go below. He 
would stand still for hours : but never sat or leaned ; his 
wan but wondrous eyes did plainly say — We two watch- 
men never rest. 

Nor, at any time, by night or day could the mariners now 
step upon the deck, unlessAhab was before them ; either 
standing in his pivot-hole, or exactly pacing the planks 
between two undeviating limits, — the main-mast and the 
mizzen ; or else they saw him standing in the cabin-scuttle, 
— his living foot advanced upon the deck, as if to step ; his 
hat slouched heavily over his eyes ; so that however motion- 
less he stood, however the days and nights were added on, 
that he had not swung in his hammock ; yet hidden be- 
neath that slouching hat, they could never tell unerringly 
whether, for all this, his eyes were really closed at times : 
or whether he was still intently scanning them ; no 
matter, though he stood so in the scuttle for a whole hour 
on the stretch, and the unheeded night-damp gathered in 
beads of dew upon that stone-carved coat and hat. The 
clothes that the night had wet, the next day’s sunshine 
dried upon him ; and so, day after day, and night after 
night ; he went no more beneath the planks ; whatever he 
wanted from the cabin that thing he sent for. 

He ate in the same open air ; that is, his two only meals, 
— breakfast and dinner : supper he never touched ; nor 
reaped his beard ; which darkly grew all gnarled, as unearthed 
roots of trees blown over, which still grow idly on at naked 
base, though perished in the upper verdure. But though 
his whole life was now become one watch on deck; and 
though the Parsee’s mystic watch was without intermission 
as hfs own; yet these two never seemed to speak — one 
man to the other — unless at long intervals some passing 

32 


498 


MOBY DICK. 


unmomentous matter made it necessary. Though such a 
potent spell seemed secretly to join the twain ; openly, and 
to the awe-struck crew, they seemed pole-like asunder. 
If by day they chanced to speak one word ; by night, dumb 
men were both, so far as concerned the slightest verbal 
interchange. At times, for longest hours, without a 
single hail, they stood far parted in the starlight ; Ahab 
in his scuttle, the Parsee by the mainmast ; but still 
fixedly gazing upon each other ; as if in the Parsee Ahab 
saw his forethrown shadow, in Ahab the Parsee his aban 
doned substance. 

And yet, somehow, did Ahab — in his own proper self, 
as daily, hourly, and every instant, commandingly revealed 
to his subordinates, — Ahab seemed an independent lord ; the 
Parsee but his slave. Still again both seemed yoked to- 
gether, and an unseen tyrant driving them ; the lean shade 
siding the solid rib. For be this Parsee what he may, all 
rib and keel was solid Ahab. 

At the first faintest glimmering of the dawn, his iron voice 
was heard from aft — “ Man the mast-heads ! ” — and all 
through the day, till after sunset and after twilight, the 
same voice every hour, at the striking of the helmsman’s 
bell, was heard — “What d’ye see ? — sharp ! sharp ! ” 

But when three or four days had slided by, after meeting 
the children-seeking Rachel ; and no spout had yet been seen ; 
the monomaniac old man seemed distrustful of his crew’s 
fidelity ; at least, of nearly all except the Pagan harpooners ; 
he seemed to doubt, even, whether Stubb and Flask might 
not willingly overlook the sight he sought. But if these 
suspicions were really his, he sagaciously refrained from 
verbally expressing them, however his actions might seem 
to hint them. 

“ I will have the first sight of the whale myself,” — he said. 
“ Aye ! Ahab must have the doubloon ! ” and with his own 
hands he rigged a nest of basketed bowlines ; and sending a 
hand aloft, with a single sheaved block, to secure to the main- 
mast head, he received the two ends of the downward- 
reeved rope ; and attaching one to his basket prepared a 
pin for the other end, in order to fasten it at the rail. This 
done, with that end yet in his hand and standing beside 
the pin, he looked round upon his crew, sweeping from one 
to the other; pausinghisglancelonguponDaggoo,Queequeg, 
Tashtego; but shunning Fedallah ; and then settling his firm 
relying eye upon the chief mate, said, — “Take the rope, sir— I 


MOBY DICK. 


499 


give it into thy hands, Starbuck.” Then arranging his person 
in the basket, he gave the word for them to hoist him to 
his perch, Starbuck being the one who secured the rope at 
last ; and afterwards stood near it. And thus, with one 
hand clinging round the royal mast, Ahab gazed abroad 
upon the sea for miles and miles, — ahead, astern, this side, 
and that, — within the wide expanded circle commanded at 
so great a height. 

When in working with his hands at some lofty almost 
isolated place in the rigging, which chances to afford no 
foothold, the sailor at sea is hoisted up to that spot, and 
sustained there by the rope; under these circumstances, its 
fastened end on deck is always given in strict charge to 
some one man who has the special watch of it. Because in 
such a wilderness of running rigging, whose various differ- 
ent relations aloft cannot always be infallibly discerned by 
what is seen of them at the deck; and when the deck-ends 
of these ropes are being every few minutes cast down from 
the fastenings, it would be but a natural fatality, if, unpro- 
vided with a constant watchman, the hoisted sailor should 
by some carelessness of the crew be cast adrift and fall all 
swooping to the sea. So Ahab’s proceedings in this matter 
were not unusual ; the only strange thing about them 
seemed to be, that Starbuck, almost the one only man who 
had ever ventured to oppose him with anything in the 
slightest degree approaching to decision — one of those too, 
whose faithfulness on the look-out he had seemed to doubt 
somewhat ;— it was strange, that this was the very man he 
should select for his watchman ; freely giving his whole 
life into such an otherwise distrusted person’s hands. 

Now, the first time Ahab was perched aloft ; ere he had 
been there ten minutes ; one of those red-billed savage sea- 
hawks which so often fly incommodiously close round the 
manned mast-heads of whalemen in these latitudes ; one of 
these birds came wheeling and screaming round his head 
in a maze of untrackably swift circlings. Then it darted 
a thousand feet straight up into the air ; then spiralised 
downwards, and went eddying again round his head. 

But with his gaze fixed upon the dim and distant hori- 
zon, Ahab seemed not to mark this wild bird ; nor, indeed, 
would any one else have marked it much, it being no un- 
common circumstance ; only now almost the least heedful 
eye seemed to see some sort of cunning meaning in almost 
every sight. 


500 


MOBY DICK. 


“ Your hat, your hat, sir!” suddenly cried the Sicilian 
seaman, who being posted at the mizzen-mast-head, stood 
directly behind Aliab, though somewhat lower than his 
level, and with a deep gulf of air dividing them. 

But already the sable wing was before the old man’s 
eyes ; the long hooked bill at his head : with a scream, the 
black hawk darted away with his prize. 

An eagle flew thrice round Tarquin’s head, removing his 
cap to replace it, and thereupon Tanaquil, his wife, declared 
that Tarquin would be king of Rome. But only by the 
replacing of the cap was that omen accounted good. 
Ahab’s hat was never restored ; the wild hawk flew on and 
on with it ; far in advance of the prow : and at last disap- 
peared; while from the point of that disappearance, a 
minute black spot was dimly discerned, falling from that 
vast height into the sea. 


CHAPTER CXXXI. 

THE PE QUOD MEETS THE DELIGHT. 

The intense Pequod sailed on ; the rolling waves and 
days went by ; the life-buoy-coffin still lightly swung ; and 
another ship, most miserably misnamed the Delight, was 
descried. As she drew nigh, all eyes were fixed upon her 
broad beams, called shears, which, in some whaling-ships, 
cross the quarter-deck at the height of eight or nine feet ; 
serving to carry the spare, unrigged, or disabled boats. 

Upon the stranger’s shears were beheld the shattered, 
white ribs, and some few splintered planks, of what had once 
been a whale-boat ; but you now saw through this wreck, 
as plainly as you see through the peeled, half-unhinged, 
and bleaching skeleton of a horse. 

“ Hast seen the White Whale ? ” 

“ Look ! ” replied the hollow-cheeked captain from his 
taffrail ; and with his trumpet he pointed to the wreck. 

“ Hast killed him ? ” 

“ The harpoon is not yet forged that will ever do that,” 
answered the other, sadly glancing upon a rounded hammock 
on the deck, whose gathered sides some noiseless sailors 
were busy in sewing together. 

“Not forged! ” and snatching Perth’s levelled iron from 


MOBY DICK. 


501 


the crotch, Ahab held it out, exclaiming — “ Look ye, Nan- 
tucketer ; here in this hand 1 hold his death ! Tempered 
in blood, and tempered by lightning are these barbs ; and I 
swear to temper them triply in that hot place behind the 
fin, where the White Whale most feels his accursed life ! ” 

“ Then God keep thee, old man — see’st thou that ” — 
pointing to the hammock — “ I bury but one of five stout 
men, who were alive only yesterday; but were dead ere 
night. Only that one I bury ; the rest were buried before 
they died; you sail upon their tomb.” Then turning to 
his crew — “ Are ye ready there ? place the plank then on the 
rail, and lift the body ; so, then — Oh ! God ! — advancing 
towards the hammock with uplifted hands — “ may the re- 
surrection and the life ” 

“ Brace forward! Up helm ! ” cried Ahab like lightning 
to his men. 

But the suddenly started Pequod was not quick enough to 
escape the sound of the splash that the corpse soon made as 
it struck the sea ; not so quick, indeed, but that some of the 
flying bubbles might have sprinkled her hull with their 
ghostly baptism. 

As Ahab now glided from the dejected Delight, the strange 
life-buoy hanging at the Pequod’s stern came into conspicu- 
ous relief. 

“ Ha ! yonder ! look yonder, men ! ” cried a foreboding 
voice in her wake. “ In vain, oh, ye strangers, ye fly our 
sad burial ; ye but turn us your taffrail to show us your 
coffin! ” 


CHAPTER CXXXII. 

THE SYMPHONY. 

It was a clear steel-blue day. The firmaments of air 
and sea were hardly separable in that all-pervading azure; 
only, the pensive air was transparently pure and soft, with 
a woman’s look, and the robust and man-like sea heaved 
with long, strong, lingering swells, as Samson’s chest in his 
sleep. 

Hither, and thither, on high, glided the snow-white wings 
of small, unspeckled birds ; these were the gentle thoughts 
of the feminine air ; but to and fro in the deeps, far down in 
the bottomless blue, rushed mighty leviathans, sword-fish, 


502 


MOBY DICK. 


and sharks ; and these were the strong, troubled, murder- 
ous thinkings of the masculine sea. 

But though thus contrasting within, the contrast was 
only in shades and shadows without; those two seemed 
one ; it was only the sex, as it were, that distinguished them. 

Aloft, like a royal czar and king, the sun seemed giving 
this gentle air to this bold and rolling sea ; even as bride to 
groom. And at the girdling line of the horizon, a soft and 
tremulous motion — most seen here at the equator — denoted 
the fond, throbbing trust, the loving alarms, with which 
the poor bride gave her bosom away. 

Tied up and twisted ; gnarled and knotted with wrinkles ; 
haggardly firm and unyielding ; his eyes glowing like coals, 
that still glow in the ashes of ruin ; untottering Aliab stood 
forth in the clearness of the morn ; lifting his splintered 
helmet of a brow to the fair girl’s forehead of heaven. 

Oh, immortal infancy, and innocency of the azure ! In- 
visible winged creatures that frolic all round us ! Sweet 
childhood of air and sky ! how oblivious were ye of old 
Ahab’s close-coiled woe ! But so have I seen little Miriam 
and Martha, laughing-eyed elves, heedlessly gambol round 
their old sire ; sporting with the circle of singed locks which 
grew on the marge of that burnt-out crater of his brain. 

Slowly crossing the deck from the scuttle, Ahab leaned 
over the side, and watched how his shadow in the water sank 
and sank to his gaze, the more and the more that he Strove 
to pierce the profundity. But the lovely aromas in that 
enchanted air did at last seem to dispel, for a moment, the 
cankerous thing in his soul. That glad, happy air, that 
winsome sky, did at last stroke and caress him ; the step- 
mother world, so long cruel — forbidding — now threw affec- 
tionate arms round his stubborn neck, and did seem to joy- 
ously sob over him, as if over one, that however wilful and 
erring, she could yet find it in her heart to save and to 
bless. From beneath his slouched hat Ahab dropped a 
tear into the sea ; nor did all the Pacific contain such wealth 
as that one wee drop. 

Starbuck saw the old man ; saw him, how he heavily 
leaned over the side ; and he seemed to hear in his own 
true heart the measureless sobbing that stole out of the 
centre of the serenity around. Careful not to touch him, 
or be noticed by him, he yet drew near to him, and stood 
there. 

Ahab turned. 


MOBY DICK. 


503 


“ Starbuck ! ” 

“ Sir.” 

“ Oh, Starbuck ! it is a mild, mild wind, and a mild look- 
ing sky. On such a day — very much such a sweetness as 
this — I struck my first whale — a boy-harpooner of eigh- 
teen ! Forty — forty — forty years ago ! — ago ! Forty years 
of continual whaling ! forty years of privation, and peril, 
and storm-time ! forty years on the pitiless sea ! for forty 
years has Aliab forsaken the peaceful land, for forty years 
to make war on the horrors of the deep ! Aye and yes, 
Starbuck, out of those forty years I have not spent three 
ashore. When I think of this life I have led ; the desola- 
tion of solitude it has been ; the masoned, walled- town of 
a Captain’s exclusiveness, which admits but small entrance 
to any sympathy from the green country without — oh, weari- 
ness ! heaviness ! Guinea-coast slavery of solitary command! 
— when I think of all this ; only half-suspected, not so 
keenly known to me before — and how for forty years I 
have fed upon dry salted fare — fit emblem of the dry nour- 
ishment of my soil ! — when the poorest landsman has had 
fresh fruit to his daily hand, and broken the world’s fresh 
bread to my mouldy crusts — away, whole oceans away, 
from that young girl- wife I wedded past fifty, and sailed for 
Cape Horn the next day, leaving but one dent in my mar- 
riage pillow — wife ? wife ? — rather a widow with her hus- 
band alive ! Aye, I widowed that poor girl when I married 
her, Starbuck ; and then, the madness, the frenzy, the boil- 
ing blood and the smoking brow, with which, for a thou- 
sand lowerings old Ahab has furiously, foamingly chased 
his prey — more a demon than a man ? — aye, aye ! what a 
forty years’ fool — fool — old fool, has old Ahab been ! Why 
this strife of the chase ? why weary, and palsy the arms 
at the oar, and the iron, and the lance ? how the richer or 
better is Ahab now ? Behold. Oh, Starbuck ! is it not 
hard, that with this weary load I bear, one poor leg should 
have been snatched from under me ? Here, brush this old 
hair aside ; it blinds me, that I seem to weep. Locks so 
grey did never grow but from out some ashes ! But do I 
look very old, so very, very old, Starbuck ? I feel deadly 
faint, bowed, and humped, as though I were Adam, stag- 
gering beneath the piled centuries since Paradise. God! 
God ! God ! — crack my heart ! — stave my brain ! — mockery ! 
mockery ! bitter biting mockery of grey hairs, have I lived 
enough joy to wear ye ; and seem and feel thus intolerably 


504 


MOBY DICK. 


old ? Close ! stand close to me, Starbuck ; let me look into a 
human eye ; it is better than to gaze into sea or sky ; better 
than to gaze upon God. By the green land ; by the bright 
hearth-stone ! this is the magic glass, man ; I see my wife and 
my child in thine eye. No, no ; stay on board, on board ! — 
lower not when I do ; when branded Ahab gives chase 
to Moby Dick. That hazard shall not be thine. No, no! 
not with the far away home I see in that eye ! ” 

“ Oh, my Captain ! my Captain ! noble soul ! grand old 
heart, after all ! why should any one give chase to that 
hated fish ! Away with me ! let us fly these deadly waters ! 
let us home ! Wife and child, too, are Star buck’s — wife 
and child of his brotherly, sisterly, play-fellow youth ; even 
as thine, sir, are the wife and child of thy loving, longing, 
paternal old age ! Away ! let us away ! — this instant let 
me alter the course ! How cheerily, how hilariously, O my 
Captain, would we bowl on our way to see old Nantucket 
again ! I think, sir, they have some such mild blue days, 
even as this, in Nantucket.” 

“ They have, they have. I have seen them — some sum- 
mer days in the morning. About this time — yes, it is his 
noon nap now — the boy vivaciously wakes ; sits up in bed ; 
and his mother tells him of me, of cannibal old me ; how 
I am abroad upon the deep, but will yet come back to dance 
him again.” 

“ ’Tis my Mary, my Mary herself ! She promised that 
my boy, every morning, should be carried to the hill to 
catch the first glimpse of his father’s sail ! Yes, yes! no 
more ! it is done ! we head for Nantucket ! Come, my 
Captain, study out the course, and let us away! See, see! 
the boy’s face from the window ! the boy’s hand on the 
hill ! ” 

But Ahab’s glance was averted ; like a blighted fruit tree 
he shook, and cast his last cindered apple to the soil. 

“What is it, what nameless, inscrutable, unearthly thing 
is it; what cozening, hidden lord and master, and cruel, 
remorseless emperor commands me ; that against all natural 
lovings and longings, I so keep pushing, and crowding, and 
jamming myself on all the time; recklessly making me 
ready to do what in my own proper, natural heart, I durst 
not so much as dare? Is Ahab, Ahab? Is it I, God, or 
who, that lifts this arm ? But if the great sun move not of 
himself ; but is as an errand-boy in heaven ; nor one single 
star can revolve, but by some invisible power ; how then 


MOBY DICK. 


505 


can this one small heart beat ; this one small brain think 
thoughts ; unless God does that heating, does that thinking, 
does that living, and not I. By heaven, man, we are turned 
round and round in this world, like yonder windlass, and 
Fate is the handspike. And all the time, lo ! that smiling 
sky, and this unsounded sea! Look! see yon Albicore! 
who put it into him to chase and fang that flying-fish? 
Where do murderers go, man ? Who’s to doom, when the 
judge himself is dragged to the bar ? But it is a mild, mild 
wind, and a mild looking sky ; and the air smells now, as 
if it blew from a far-away meadow ; they have been making 
hay somewhere under the slopes of the Andes, Starbuck, 
and the mowers are sleeping among the new-mown hay. 
Sleeping ? Aye, toil we how we may, we all sleep at last 
on the field. Sleep ? Aye, and rust amid greenness ; as 
last years scythes flung down, and left in the half-cut swaths 
— Starbuck ! ” 

But blanched to a corpse’s hue with despair, the Mate 
had stolen away. 

Ahab crossed the deck to gaze over on the other side ; 
but started at two reflected, fixed eyes in the water there. 
Fedallah was motionlessly leaning over the same rail. 


CHAPTER CXXXIII. 

THE CHASE FIRST DAY. 

That night, in the mid-watch, when the old man — as his 
wont at intervals — stepped forth from the scuttle in which 
he leaned, and went to his pivot-hole, he suddenly thrust 
out his face fiercely, snuffing up the sea air as a sagacious 
ship’s dog will, in drawing nigh to some barbarous isle. 
He declared that a whale must be near. Soon that peculiar 
odour, sometimes to a great distance given forth by the living 
sperm whale, was palpable to all the watch ; nor was any 
mariner surprised when, after inspecting the compass, and 
then the dog- vane, and then ascertaining the precise bearing 
of the odour as nearly as possible, Ahab rapidly ordered the 
ship’s course to be slightly altered, and the sail to be 
shortened. 

The acute policy dictating these movement was sufficiently 
vindicated at daybreak, by the sight of a long sleek on the 


506 


MOBY DICK. 


sea directly and lengthwise ahead, smooth as oil, and 
resembling in the pleated watery wrinkles bordering it, the 
polished metallic-like marks of some swift tide-rip, at the 
mouth of a deep, rapid stream. 

“ Man the mast-heads ! Call all hands ! ” 

Thundering with the butts of three clubbed handspikes 
on the forecastle deck, Daggoo roused the sleepers with 
such judgment claps that they seemed to exhale from the 
scuttle, so instantaneously did they appear with their 
clothes in their hands. 

“ What d’ye see ?” cried Ahab, flattening his face to the 
sky. 

“Nothing, nothing, sir ! ” was the sound hailing down in 
reply. 

“ T’gallant sails ! stunsails alow and aloft, and on both 
sides ! ” 

All sail being set, he now cast loose the life-line, reserved 
for swaying him to the main royal- mast head ; and in a few 
moments they were hoisting him thither, when, while but 
two-thirds of the way aloft, and while peering ahead 
through the horizontal vacancy between the main-top-sail and 
top-gallant-sail, he raised a gull-like cry in the air, “ There 
she blows ! — there she blows ! A hump like a snow-hill ! 
It is Moby Dick ! ” 

Fired by the cry which seemed simultaneously taken up 
by the three look-outs, the men on deck rushed to the 
rigging to behold the famous whale they had so long been 
pursuing. Ahab had now gained his final perch, some 
feet above the other look-outs, Tashtego standing just 
beneath him on the cap of the top-gallant-mast, so that 
the Indian’s head was almost on a level with Ahab’s heel. 
From this height the whale was now seen some mile or so 
ahead, at every roll of the sea revealing his high sparkling 
hump, and regularly jetting his silent spout into the air. 
To the credulous mariners it seemed the same silent spout 
they had so long ago beheld in the moonlit Atlantic and 
Indian Oceans. 

“ And did none of ye see it before ? ” cried Ahab, hailing 
the perched men all around him. 

“ I saw him almost that same instant, sir, that Captain 
Ahab did, and I cried out,” said Tashtego. 

“Not the same instant; not the same — no, the doubloon is 
mine, Fate reserved the doubloon for me. I only ; none of ye 
could have raised the White Whale first. There she blows ! 


MOBY DICK. 


507 


there she blows !— there she blows ! There again !— there 
again ! ” he cried, in long-drawn, lingering, methodic tones, 
attuned to the gradual prolongings of the whale’s visible 
jets. “He’s going to sound! In stunsails! Down top- 
gallant-sails ! Stand by three boats. Mr. Starbuck, re- 
member, stay on board, and keep the ship. Helm there ! 
Luff, luff a point ! So ; steady, man, steady ! There go 
flukes ! No, no ; only black water ! All ready the boats 
there ? Stand by, stand by ! Lower me, Mr. Starbuck ; 
lower, lower, — quick, quicker ! ” and he slid through the air 
to the deck. 

“He is heading straight to leeward, sir,” cried Stubb, 
“ right away from us ; cannot have seen the ship yet.” 

“ Be dumb, man ! Stand by the braces ! Hard down 
the helm ! — brace up ! Shiver her ! — shiver her ! So ; well 
that ! Boats, boats ! ” 

Soon all the boats but Starbuck’s were dropped ; all the 
boat-sails set — all the paddles plying ; with rippling swift- 
ness, shooting to leeward ; and Ahab heading the onset. 
A pale, death-glimmer lit up Fedallah’s sunken eyes; a 
hideous motion gnawed his mouth. 

Like noiseless nautilus shells, their light prows sped 
through the sea ; but only slowly they neared the foe. As 
they neared him, the ocean grew still more smooth ; seemed 
drawing a carpet over its waves ; seemed a noon-meadow, 
so serenely it spread. At length the breathless hunter 
came so nigh his seemingly unsuspecting prey, that his en- 
tire dazzling hump was distinctly visible, sliding along the 
sea as if an isolated thing, and continually set in a revolv- 
ing ring of finest, fleecy, greenish foam. He saw the vast 
involved wrinkles of the slightly projecting head beyond. 
Before it, far out on the soft Turkish-rugged waters, went 
the glistening white shadow from his broad, milky fore- 
head, a musical rippling playfully accompanying the shade ; 
and behind, the blue waters interchangeably flowed over 
into the moving valley of his steady wake ; and on either 
hand bright bubbles arose and danced by his side. But 
these were broken again by the light toes of hundreds of 
gay fowl softly feathering the sea, alternate with their fit- 
ful flight; and like to some flag-staff rising from the 
painted hull of an argosy, the tall but shattered pole of a 
recent lance projected from the white whale’s back ; and 
at intervals one of the cloud of soft-toed fowls hovering, 
and to and fro skimming like a canopy over the fish, silently 


508 


MOBY DICK. 


perched and rocked on this pole, the long tail feathers 
streaming like pennons. 

A gentle joyousness — a mighty mildness of repose in 
swiftness, invested the gliding whale. Not the white hull 
Jupiter swimming away with ravished Europa clinging to 
his graceful horns ; his lovely, leering eyes sideways intent 
upon the maid ; with smooth bewitching fleetness, rippling 
straight for the nuptial bower in Crete; not Jove, not that 
great majesty Supreme! did surpass the glorified White 
Whale as he so divinely swam. 

On each soft side — coincident with the parted swell, that 
but once leaving him, then flowed so wide away — on each 
bright side, the whale shed off enticings. No wonder there 
had been some among the hunters who namelessly trans- 
ported and allured by all this serenity, had ventured to 
assail it ; but had fatally found that quietude but the ves- 
ture of tornadoes. Yet calm, enticing calm, oh, whale! 
thou glidest on, to all who for the first time eye thee, no 
matter how many in that same way thou may’st have be- 
juggled and destroyed before. 

And thus, through the serene tranquillities of the tropical 
sea, among waves whose hand-clappings were suspended 
by exceeding rapture, Moby Dick moved on, still withhold- 
ing from sight the full terrors of his submerged trunk, en- 
tirely hiding the wrenched hideousness of his jaw. But 
soon the fore part of him slowly rose from the water ; for 
an instant his whole marbleized body formed a high arch, 
like Virginia’s Natural Bridge, and warningly waving his 
bannered flukes in the air, the grand god revealed himself, 
sounded, and went out of sight. Iloveringly halting, and 
dipping on the wing, the white sea-fowls longingly lingered 
over the agitated pool that he left. 

With oars apeak, and paddles down, the sheets of their 
sails adrift, the three boats now stilly floated, awaiting 
Moby Dick’s reappearance. 

“An hour,” said Ahab, standing rooted in his boat’s 
stern ; and he gazed beyond the whale’s place, towards the 
dim blue spaces and wide wooing vacancies to leeward. It 
was only an instant ; for again his eyes seemed whirling 
round in his head as he swept the watery circle. The 
breeze now freshened ; the sea began to swell. 

“ The birds ! — the birds ! ” cried Tashtego. 

In long Indian file, as when herons take wing, the white 
birds were now all flying towards Ahab’s boat ; and when 


MOBY DICK . 


509 


within a few yards began fluttering over the water there, 
wheeling round and round, with joyous, expectant cries. 
Their vision was keener than man’s ; Ahab could discover 
no sign in the sea. But suddenly as he peered down and 
down into its depths, he profoundly saw a white living spot 
no bigger than a white weasel, with wonderful celerity up- 
rising, and magnifying as it rose, till it turned, and then 
there were plainly revealed two long crooked rows of white, 
glistening teeth, floating up from the undiscoverable 
bottom. It was Moby Dick’s open mouth and scrolled jaw ; 
his vast, shadowed bulk still half blending with the blue of 
the sea. The glittering mouth yawned beneath the boat 
like an open-doored marble tomb ; and giving one sidelong 
sweep with his steering oar, Ahab whirled the craft aside 
from this tremendous apparition. Then, calling upon 
Fedallah to change places with him, went forward to the 
bows, and seizing Perth’s harpoon, commanded his crew to 
grasp their oars and stand by to stern. 

Now, by reason of this timely spinning round the boat 
upon its axis, its bow, by anticipation, was made to face the 
whale’s head while yet under water. But as if perceiving 
this stratagem, Moby Dick, with that malicious intelligence 
ascribed to him, sidelingly transplanted himself, as it were, 
in an instant, shooting his plated head lengthwise beneath 
the boat. 

Through and through ; through every plank and each 
rib, it thrilled for an instant, the whale obliquely lying on 
his back, in the manner of a biting shark, slowly and feel- 
ingly taking its bows full within his mouth, so that the 
long, narrow, scrolled lower jaw curled high up into the 
open air, and one of the teeth caught in a row-lock. 
The bluish pearl-white of the inside of the jaw was within 
six inches of Ahab’s head, and reached higher than that. 
In this attitude the White Whale now shook the slight 
cedar as a mildly cruel cat her mouse. With unastonislied 
eyes Fedallah gazed, and crossed his arms ; but the tiger- 
yellow crew were tumbling over each other’s heads to gain 
the uttermost stern. 

And now, while both elastic gunwales were springing in 
and out, as the whale dallied with the doomed craft in this 
devilish way ; and from his body being submerged beneath 
the boat, he could not be darted at from the bows, for the 
bows were almost inside of him, as it were ; and while the 
other boats involuntarily paused, as before a quick crisis 


510 


MOBY DICK. 


impossible to withstand, then it was that monomaniac 
Ahab, furious with' this tantalizing vicinity of his foe, which 
placed him all alive and helpless in the very jaws he hated ; 
frenzied with all this, he seized the long bone with his 
naked hands, and wildly strove to wrench it from its gripe. 
As now he thus vainly strove, the jaw slipped from him ; 
the frail gunwales bent in, collapsed, and snapped, as both 
jaws, like an enormous shears, sliding further aft, bit the 
craft completely in twain, and locked themselves fast again 
in the sea, midway between the two floating wrecks. These 
floated aside, the broken ends drooping, the crew at the 
stern- wreck clinging to the gunwales, and striving to hold 
fast to the oars to lash them across. 

At that preluding moment, ere the boat was yet snapped, 
Ahab, the first to perceive the whale’s intent, by the crafty 
upraising of his head, a movement that loosed his hold for 
the time ; at that moment his hand had made one final 
effort to push the boat out of the bite. But only slipping 
further into the whale’s mouth, and tilting over sideways 
as it slipped, the boat had shaken off his hold on the jaw ; 
spilled him out of it, as he leaned to the push ; and so he 
fell flat-faced upon the sea. 

Ripplingly withdrawing from his prey, Moby Dick now 
lay at a little distance, vertically thrusting his oblong white 
head up and down in the billows ; and at the same time 
slowly revolving his whole spindled body ; so that when 
his vast wrinkled forehead rose — some twenty or more feet 
out of the water — the now rising swells, with all their con- 
fluent waves, dazzling broke against it ; vindictively toss- 
ing their shivered spray still higher into the air.* So, in a 
gale, the but half baffled Channel billows only recoil from 
the base of the Eddystone, triumphantly to overleap its 
summit with their scud. 

But soon resuming his horizontal attitude, Moby Dick 
swam swiftly round and round the wrecked crew ; side- 
ways churning the water in his vengeful wake, as if lash- 
ing himself up to still another and more deadly assault. 
The sight of the splintered boat seemed to madden him, as 
the blood of grapes and mulberries cast before Antiochus’s 

* This motion is peculiar to the sperm whale. It receives its designa- 
tion (pitchpoling) from its being likened to that preliminary up-and- 
down poise of the whale-lance, in the exercise called pitchpoling, pre- 
viously described. By this motion the whale must best and most com- 
prehensively view whatever objects may be encircling him. 


MOBY DICK. 


511 


elephants in the hook of Maccabees. Meanwhile Ahab half 
smothered in the foam of the whale’s insolent tail, and too 
much of a cripple to swim, — though he could still keep 
afloat, even in the heart of such a whirlpool as that ; help- 
less Allah’s head was seen, like a tossed bubble which the 
least chance shock might burst. From the boat’s fragmen- 
tary stern, Fedallali incuriously and mildly eyed him ; the 
clinging crew, at the other drifting end, could not succour 
him ; more than enough was it for them to look to them- 
selves. F or so revolvingly appalling was the White Whale’s 
aspect, and so planetarily swift the ever-contracting 
circles he made, that he seemed horizontally swooping 
upon them. And though the other boats, unharmed, still 
hovered hard by ; still they dared not pull into the eddy to 
strike, lest that should be the signal for the instant destruc- 
tion of the jeopardised castaways, Ahab and all ; nor in 
that case could they themselves hope to escape. With 
straining eyes, then, they remained on the outer edge of 
the direful zone, whose centre had now become the old 
man’s head. 

Meantime, from the beginning all this had been descried 
from the ship’s mast heads ; and squaring her yards, she 
had borne down upon the scene ; and was now so nigh, that 
Ahab in the water hailed her ; — “ Sail on the ” — but that 
moment a breaking sea dashed on him from Moby Dick, 
and whelmed him for the time. But struggling out of it 
again, and chancing to rise on a towering crest, he shouted, 
— “ Sail on the whale ! — Drive him off ! ” 

The Pequod’s prows were pointed ; and breaking up the 
charmed circle, she effectually parted the white whale from 
his victim. As he sullenly swam off, the boats flew to the 
rescue. 

Dragged into Stubb’s boat with blood-shot, blinded eyes, 
the white brine caking in his wrinkles; the long tension 
of Ahab’s bodily strength did crack, and helplessly he 
yielded to his body’s doom : for a time, lying all crushed in 
the bottom of Stubb’s boat, like one trodden under foot of 
herds of elephants. Far inland, nameless wails came from 
him, as desolate sounds from out ravines. 

But this intensity of his physical prostration did but so 
much the more abbreviate it. In an instant’s compass, 
great hearts sometimes condense to one deep pang, the sum 
total of those shallow pains kindly diffused through feebler 
men’s whole lives. And so, such hearts, though summary 


512 


MOBY DICK. 


in each one suffering ; still, if the gods decree it, in their 
life-time aggregate a whole age of woe, wholly made up of 
instantaneous intensities ; for even in their pointless cen- 
tres, those noble natures contain the entire circumferences 
of inferior souls. 

“ The harpoon,” said Aliab, half-way rising, and drag- 
gingly leaning on one bended arm — “ is it safe ? ” 

“ Aye, sir, for it was not darted ; this is it,” said Stubb, 
showing it. 

“ Lay it before me ; — any missing men ? ” 

“ One, two, three, four, five ; — there were five oars, sir, 
and here are five men.” 

“ That’s good. — Help me, man ; I wish to stand. So, so, 
I see him ! there ! there ! going to leeward still ; what a 
leaping spout ! — Hands off from me ! The eternal sap runs 
up in Ahab’s bones again ! Set the sail ; out oars ; the 
helm ! ” 

It is often the case that when a boat is stove, its crew, 
being picked up by another boat, help to work that second 
boat ; and the chase is thus continued with what is called 
double-banked oars. It was thus now. But the added 
power of the boat did not equal the added powder of the 
whale, for he seemed to have treble-banked his every fin ; 
swimming with a velocity which plainly showed, that if 
now, under these circumstances, pushed on, the chase 
would prove an indefinitely prolonged, if not a hopeless 
one ; nor could any crew endure for so long a period, such 
an unintermitted, intense straining at the oar ; a thing 
barely tolerable only in some one brief vicissitude. The 
ship itself, then, as it sometimes happens, offered the most 
promising intermediate means of overtaking the chase. 
Accordingly, the boats now made for her, and were soon 
swayed up to their cranes — the two parts of the wrecked 
boat having been previously secured by her — and then 
hoisting everything to her side, and stacking her canvas 
high up, and sideways outstretching it with stun-sails, like 
the double- jointed wings of an albatross ; the Pequod bore 
down in the leeward wake of Moby-I)ick. At the well 
known, methodic intervals, the whale’s glittering spout 
was regularly announced from the manned mast-heads ; 
and when he would be reported as just gone down, Ahab 
would take the time, and then pacing the deck, binnacle- 
watch in hand, so soon as the last second of the allotted 
hour expired, his voice was heard. — “ Whose is the doub- 


MOBY DICK. 


513 


loon now ? D’ye see him ? ” and if the reply was, No, sir ! 
straightway he commanded them to lift him to his perch. 
In this way the day wore on ; Ahab, now aloft and motion- 
less ; anon, unrestingly pacing the planks. 

As he was thus walking, uttering no sound, except to 
hail the men aloft, or to bid them hoist a sail still higher, 
or to spread one to a still greater breadth — thus to and fro 
pacing, beneath his slouched hat, at every turn he passed 
his own wrecked boat, which had been dropped upon the 
quarter-deck, and lay there reversed ; broken bow to shat- 
tered stern. At last he paused before it; and as in an 
already over-clouded sky fresh troops of clouds will some- 
times sail across, so over the old man’s face there now stole 
some such added gloom as this. 

Stubb saw him pause ; and perhaps intending, not vainly, 
though, to evince his own unabated fortitude, and thus 
keep up a valiant place in his Captain’s mind, he advanced, 
and eyeing the wreck exclaimed — “ The thistle the ass 
refused ; it pricked his mouth too keenly, sir ; ha ! ha ! ” 

“ What soulless thing is this that laughs before a wreck ? 
Man, man ! did I not know thee brave as fearless fire (and 
as mechanical) I could swear thou wert a poltroon. Groan 
nor laugh should be heard before a wreck.” 

“ Aye, sir,” said Starbuck drawing near, “ ’tis a solemn 
sight ; an omen, and an ill one.” 

“Omen? omen? — the dictionary! If the gods think to 
speak outright to man, they will honourably speak outright ; 
not shake their heads, and give an old wives’ darkling hint. 
— Begone! Ye two are the opposite poles of one thing; 
Starbuck is Stubb reversed, and Stubb is Starbuck; and 
ye two are all mankind ; and Ahab stands alone among the 
millions of the peopled earth, nor gods nor men his neigh- 
bours ! Cold, cold — I shiver ! — How now ? Aloft there ! 
D’ye see him ? Sing out for every spout, though he spout 
ten times a second ! ” 

The day was nearly done ; only the hem of his golden 
robe was rustling. Soon, it was almost dark, but the look- 
out men still remained unset. 

Can’t see the spout now, sir ; — too dark ” — cried a voice 
from the air. 

“ How heading when last seen ? ” 

“As before, sir,— straight to leeward.” 

“ Good ! he will travel slower now ’tis night. Down roy- 
als and top-gallant stun-sails, Mr. Starbuck. We must not 

33 


514 


MOBY DICK. 


run over him before morning; he’s making a passage now, 
and may heave-to a while. Helm there ! keep her full before 
the wind ! — Aloft ! come down ! — Mr. Stubb, send a fresh 
hand to the fore-mast head, and see it manned till morn- 
ing.” — Then advancing towards the doubloon in the main- 
mast — .« Men, this gold is mine, for I earned it ; but I shall 
let it abide here till the White Whale is dead ; and then, 
whosoever of ye first raises him, upon the day he shall be 
killed, this gold is that man’s ; and if on that day I shall 
again raise him, then, ten times its sum shall be divided 
among all of ye ! Away now ! — the deck is thine, sir.” 

And so saying, he placed himself half-way within the 
scuttle, and slouching his hat, stood there till dawn, except 
when at intervals rousing himself to see how the night 
wore on. 


CHAPTER CXXXIV. 

THE CHASE SECOND DAY. 

At daybreak, the three mast-heads were punctually 
manned afresh. 

“ D’ye see him ? ” cried Ahab, after allowing a little space 
for the light to spread. 

“ See nothing, sir.” 

“ Turn up all hands and make sail ! he travels faster than 
I thought for ; — the top-gallant sails ! — aye, they should 
have been kept on her all night. But no matter — ’tis but 
resting for the rush.” 

Here be it said, that this pertinacious pursuit of one par- 
ticular whale, continued through day into night, and through 
night into day, is a thing by no means unprecedented in 
the South Sea fishery. For such is the wonderful skill, 
prescience of experience, and invincible confidence acquired 
by some great natural geniuses among the Nantucket com- 
manders ; that from the simple observation of a whale 
when last descried, they will, under certain given circum- 
stances, pretty accurately foretell both the direction in 
which he will continue to swim for a time, while out of 
sight, as well as his probable rate of progression during 
that period. And, in these cases, somewhat as a pilot, 
when about losing sight of a coast, whose general trending 


MOBY T)ICK. 


515 


he well knows, and which he desires shortly to return to 
again, but at some further point ; like as this pilot stands 
by his compass, and takes the precise bearing of the cape 
at present visible, in order the more certainly to hit aright 
the remote, unseen headland, eventually to be visited : so 
does the fisherman, at his compass, with the whale ; for 
after being chased, and diligently marked, through several 
hours of daylight, then, when night obscures the fish, the 
creature’s future wake through the darkness is almost as 
established to the sagacious mind of the hunter, as the 
pilot’s coast is to him. So that to this hunter’s wondrous 
skill, the proverbial evanescence of a thing writ in water, a 
wake, is to all desired purposes well-nigh as reliable as the 
steadfast land. And as the mighty iron Leviathan of the 
modern railway is so familiarly known in its every pace, 
that, with watches in their hands, men time his rate as 
doctors that of a baby’s pulse ; and lightly say of it, the up 
train or the down train will reach such or such a spot, at 
such or such an hour ; even so, almost, there are occasions 
when these Nantucketers time that other Leviathan of the 
deep, according to the observed humour of his speed ; and 
say to themselves, so many hours hence this whale will 
have gone two hundred miles, will have about reached this 
or that degree of latitude or longitude. But to render this 
acuteness at all successful in the end, the wind and the sea 
must be the whaleman’s allies ; for of what present avail to 
the becalmed or windbound mariner is the skill that assures 
him he is exactly ninety-three leagues and a quarter from 
his port ? Inferable from these statements, are many col- 
lateral subtile matters touching the chase of whales. 

The ship tore on ; leaving such a furrow in the sea as 
when a cannon-ball, missent, becomes a ploughshare and 
turns up the level field. 

“ By salt and hemp ! ” cried Stubb, “ but this swift mo- 
tion of the deck creeps up one’s legs and tingles at the 
heart. This ship and I are two brave fellows !— Ha ! ha ! 
Some one take me up, and launch me, spine- wise, on the 
sea, — for by live-oaks ! my spine’s a keel. Ha, ha ! we go 
the gait that leaves no dust behind ! ” 

“ There she blows— she blows !— she blows !— right 
ahead ! ” was now the mast-head cry. 

“ Aye, aye ! ” cried Stubb, “ I knew it — ye can’t escape — 
blow on and split your spout, O whale ! the mad fiend him- 
self is after ye ! blow your trump — blister your lungs ! — 


516 


MOBY DICK. 


Aliab will dam off your blood, as a miller shuts his water- 
gate upon the stream ! ” 

And Stubb did but speak out for well-nigh all that crew. 
The frenzies of the chase had by this time worked them 
bubblingly up, like old wine worked anew. Whatever pale 
fears and forebodings some of them might have felt before ; 
these were not only now kept out of sight through the grow- 
ing awe of Ahab, but they were broken up, and on all sides 
routed, as timid prairie hares that scatter before the bound- 
ing bison. The hand of Fate had snatched all their souls ; 
and by the stirring perils of the previous day ; the rack of 
the past night’s suspense ; the fixed, unfearing, blind, reck- 
less way in which their wild craft went plunging towards its 
flying mark ; by all these things, their hearts were bowled 
along. The wind that made great bellies of their sails, and 
rushed the vessel on by arms invisible as irresistible ; this 
seemed the symbol of that unseen agency which so enslaved 
them to the race. 

They were one man, not thirty. For as the one ship that 
held them all ; though it was put together of all contrast- 
ing things — oak, and maple, and pine wood ; iron, and 
pitch, and hemp — yet all these ran into each other in the 
one concrete hull, which shot on its way, both balanced and 
directed by the long central keel ; even so, all the individu- 
alities of the crew, this man’s valour, that man’s fear ; guilt 
and guiltiness, all varieties were wedded into oneness, and 
were all directed to that fatal goal which Ahab their one 
lord and keel did point to. 

The rigging lived. The mast-heads, like the tops of tall 
palms, were outspreadingly tufted with arms and legs. 
Clinging to a spar with one hand, some reached forth the 
other with impatient wavings ; others, shading their eyes 
from the vivid sunlight, sat far out on the rocking yards ; 
all the spars in full bearing of mortals, ready and ripe for 
their fate. Ah ! how they still strove through that infinite 
blueness to seek out the thing that might destroy them ! 

“ Why sing ye not out for him, if ye see him ? ” cried 
Ahab, when, after the lapse of some minutes since the first 
cry, no more had been heard. “ Sway me up, men ; ye have 
been deceived ; not Moby Dick casts one odd jet that way, 
and then disappears.” 

It was even so ; in their headlong eagerness, the men had 
mistaken some other thing for the whale-spout, as the event 
itself soon proved ; for hardly had Ahab reached his perch ; 


MOB Y DICK. 


517 


hardly was the rope belayed to its pin on deck, when he 
struck the key-note to an orchestra, that made the air vibrate 
as with the combined discharges of rifles. The triumphant 
halloo of thirty buckskin lungs was heard, as — much nearer 
to the ship than the place of the imaginary jet, less than a 
mile ahead — Moby Dick bodily burst into view ! For not 
by any calm and indolent spoutings ; not by the peaceable 
gush of that mystic fountain in his head, did the White 
Whale now reveal his vicinity ; but by the far more won- 
drous phenomenon of breaching. Rising with his utmost 
velocity from the furthest depths, the Sperm Whale thus 
booms his entire bulk into the pure element of air, and piling 
up a mountain of dazzling foam, shows his place to the dis- 
tance of seven miles and more. In those moments, the torn, 
enraged waves he shakes off, seem his mane; in some cases, 
this breaching is his act of defiance. 

“ There she breaches ! there she breaches ! ” was the cry, 
as in his immeasurable bravadoes the White Whale tossed 
himself salmon-like to Heaven. So suddenly seen in the 
blue plain of the sea, and relieved against the still bluer 
margin of the sky,' the spray that he raised, for the moment, 
intolerably glittered and glared like a glacier ; and stood 
there gradually fading and fading away from its first 
sparkling intensity, to the dim mistiness of an advancing 
shower in a vale. 

“ Aye, breach your last to the sun, Moby Dick ! ” cried 
Aliab, u thy hour and thy harpoon are at hand! — Down! 
down all of ve, but one man at the fore. The boats ! — stand 
by!” 

Unmindful of the tedious rope-ladders of the shrouds, the 
men, like shooting stars, slid to the deck, by the isolated 
backstays and halyards; while Ahab, less dartingly, but 
still rapidly, was dropped from his perch. 

“ Lower away,” he cried, so soon as he had reached his 
boat — a spare one, rigged the afternoon previous. “Mr. 
Starbuck, the ship is thine — keep away from the boats, but 
keep near them. Lower, all ! ” 

As if to strike a quick terror into them, by this time being 
the first assailant himself, Moby Dick had turned, and was 
now coming .for the three crews. Ahab’s boat was central ; 
and cheering his men, he told them he would take the whale 
head-and-head, — that is, pull straight up to his forehead, — 
a not uncommon thing ; for when within a certain limit, 
such a course excludes the coming onset from the whale’s 


518 


MOBY DICK. 


sidelong vision. But ere that close limit was gained, and 
while yet all three boats were plain as the ship’s three masts 
to his eye ; the White Whale churning himself into furious 
speed, almost in an instant as it were, rushing among the 
boats with open jaws, and a lashing tail, offered appalling 
battle on every side ; and heedless of the irons darted at him 
from every boat, seemed only intent on annihilating each 
separate plank of which those boats were made. But skil- 
fully manoeuvred, incessantly wheeling like trained chargers 
in the field ; the boats for a while eluded him ; though, at 
times, but by a plank’s breadth ; while all the time, Ahab’s 
unearthly slogan tore every other cry but his to shreds. 

But at last in his untraceable evolutions, the White Whale 
so crossed and recrossed, and in a thousand ways entangled 
the slack of the three lines now fast to him, that they fore- 
shortened, and, of themselves, warped the devoted boats 
towards the planted irons in him ; though now for a moment 
the whale drew aside a little, as if to rally for a more tre- 
mendous charge. Seizing that opportunity, Ahab first paid 
out more line : and then was rapidly hauling and jerking in 
upon it again — hoping that way to disencumber it of some 
snarls — when lo ! — a sight more savage than the embattled 
teeth of sharks ! 

Caught and twisted — corkscrewed in the mazes of the 
line, loose harpoons and lances, with all their bristling barbs 
and points, came flashing and dripping up to the chocks in 
the bows of Ahab’s boat. Only one thing could be done. 
Seizing the boat-knife, he critically reached within — through 
— and then, without — the rays of steel; dragged in the line 
beyond, passed it, inboard, to the bowsman, and then, twice 
sundering the rope near the chocks — dropped the inter- 
cepted fagot of steel into the sea ; and was all fast again. 
That instant, the White Whale made a sudden rush among 
the remaining tangles of the other lines ; by so doing, irre- 
sistibly dragged the more involved boats of Stubb and Flask 
towards his flukes ; dashed them together like two rolling 
husks on a surf-beaten beach, and then, diving down into 
the sea, disappeared in a boiling maelstrom, in which, for a 
space, the odorous cedar chips of the wrecks danced round 
and round, like the grated nutmeg in a swiftly stirred bowl 
of punch. 

While the two crews were yet circling in the waters, reach- 
ing out after the revolving line-tubs, oars, and other float- 
ing furniture, while aslope little Flask bobbed up and 


MOB Y DICK. 


519 


down like an empty vial, twitching his legs upwards to 
escape the dreaded jaws of sharks ; and Stubb was lustily 
singing out for some one to ladle him up ; and while the 
old man’s line — now parting — admitted of his pulling into 
the creamy pool to rescue whom he could ; — in that wild 
simultaneousness of a thousand concreted perils, — Ahab’s 
yet unstricken boat seemed drawn up towards Heaven by 
invisible wires, — as, arrow-like, shooting perpendicularly 
from the sea, the White Whale dashed his broad forehead 
against its bottom, and sent it, turning over and over, into 
the air ; till it fell again — gunwale downwards — and Ahab 
and his men struggled out from under it, like seals from a 
sea-side cave. 

The first uprising momentum of the whale — modifying 
its direction as he struck the surface — involuntarily 
launched him along it, to a little distance from the centre 
of the destruction he had made ; and with his back to it, he 
now lay for a moment slowly feeling with his flukes from 
side to side ; and whenever a stray oar, bit of plank, the 
least chip or crumb of the boats touched his skin, his tail 
swiftly drew back, and came sideways, smiting the sea. 
But soon, as if satisfied that his work for that time was 
done, he pushed his pleated forehead through the ocean, 
and trailing after him the intertangled lines, continued 
his leeward way at a traveller’s methodic pace. 

As before, the attentive ship having descried the whole 
fight, again came bearing down to the rescue, and dropping 
a "boat, picked up the floating mariners, tubs, oars, and 
whatever else could be caught at, and safely landed them 
on her decks. Some sprained shoulders, wrists, and ankles ; 
livid contusions ; wrenched harpoons and lances : inextric- 
able intricacies of rope ; shattered oars and planks ; all 
these were there ; but no fatal or even serious ill seemed 
to have befallen any one. As with Fedallah the day be- 
fore, so Ahab was now found grimly clinging to his boat’s 
broken half, which afforded a comparatively easy float ; 
nor did it so exhaust him as the previous day’s mishap. 

But when he was helped to the deck, all eyes were 
fastened upon him ; as instead of standing by himself he still 
half-hung upon the shoulder of Starbuck, who had thus far 
been the foremost to assist him. His ivory leg had been 
snapped off, leaving but one short sharp splinter. 

“ Aye aye, Starbuck, ’tis sweet to lean sometimes, be the 


5-0 


MOBY DICK. 


leaner who he will ; and would old Aliabhad leaned oftener 
than he has.” 

“ The ferrule has not stood, sir,” said the carpenter, 
now coming up ; “ I put good work into that leg.” 

“ But no bones broken, sir, I hope,” said Stubb with 
true concern. 

“ Aye ! and all splintered to pieces, Stubb ! — d’ye see it. 
— But even with a broken bone, old Ahab is untouched ; 
and I account no living bone of mine one jot more me, than 
this dead one that’s lost. Nor white whale, nor man, nor 
fiend, can so much as graze old Ahab in his own proper 
and inaccessible being. Can any lead touch yonder floor, 
any mast scrape yonder roof? — Aloft there! which way?” 

“ Dead to leeward, sir.” 

“Up helm, then ; pile on the sail again, ship keepers ! 
down the rest of the spare boats and rig them — Mr. Star- 
buck away, and muster the boat’s crews.” 

“ Let me first help thee towards the bulwarks, sir.” 

“ Oh, oh, oh ! how this splinter gores me now ! Accursed 
fate ! that the unconquerable captain in the soul should 
have such a craven mate ! ” 

“ Sir ? ” 

“My body, man, not thee. Give me something for a 
cane — there, that shivered lance will do. Muster the men. 
Surely I have not seen him yet. By heaven it cannot be ! — 
missing ? — quick ! call them all.” 

The old man’s hinted thought was true. Upon muster- 
ing the company, the Parsee was not there. 

“ The Parsee ! ” cried Stubb — “ he must have been caught 
in ” 

“ The black vomit wrench thee ! — run all of ye above, 
alow, cabin, forecastle — find him — not gone — not gone ! ” 

But quickly they returned to him with the tidings that 
the Parsee was nowhere to be found. 

“ Aye, sir,” said Stubb — “ caught among the tangles of 
your line — I thought I saw him dragging under.” 

“ My line ! my line? Gone? — gone? What means that 
little word ? — What death-knell rings in it, that old Ahab 
shakes as if he were the belfry. The harpoon, too ! — toss 
over the litter there, — d’ye see it ? — the forged iron, men, 
the white whale’s — no, no, no, — blistered fool ! this hand 
did dart it! — ’tis in the fish! — Aloft there! Keep him 
nailed — Quick! — all hands to the rigging of the boats — 
collect the oars — harpooners ! the irons, the irons ! — hoist 


MOBY DICK. 


521 


the royals higher — a pull on all the sheets ! — helm there ! 
steady, steady for your life ! I’ll ten times girdle the un- 
measured globe ; yea and dive straight through it, but I’ll 
slay him yet ! ” 

“ Great God ! but for one single instant show thyself,'’ 
cried Starbuck ; “ never never wilt thou capture him, old 
man. — In Jesus’ name no more of this, that’s worse than 
devil’s madness. Two days chased ; twice stove to splinters ; 
thy very leg once more snatched from under thee ; thy evil 
shadow gone — all good angels mobbing thee with warn- 
ings : — what more wouldst thou have ? — Shall we keep chas- 
ing this murderous fish till he swamps the last man ? Shall 
we be dragged by him to the bottom of the sea ? Shall we 
be towed by him to the infernal world ? Oh, oh, — Impiety 
and blasphemy to hunt him more ! ” 

“ Starbuck, of late I’ve felt strangely moved to thee; ever 
since that hour we both saw — thou know’st what, in one 
another’s eyes. But in this matter of the whale, be the 
front of thy face to me as the palm of this hand — a lipless, 
unfeatured blank. Ahab is for ever Ahab, man. This 
whole act’s immutably decreed. ’Twas rehearsed by thee 
and me a billion years before this ocean rolled. Fool ! I 
am the Fates’ lieutenant ; I act under orders. Look thou, 
underling ! that thou obeyest mine. — Stand round me, men. 
Ye see an old man cut down to the stump; leaning on a 
shivered lance ; propped up on a lonely foot. ’Tis Ahab — 
his body’s part ; but Aliab’s soul’s a centipede, that moves 
upon a hundred legs. I feel strained, half stranded, as ropes 
that tow dismasted frigates in a gale ; and I may look so. 
But ere I break, ye’ll hear me crack ; and till ye hear that , 
know that Ahab’s hawser tows his purpose yet. Believe 
ye, men, in the things called omens ? Then laugh aloud, 
and cry encore! For ere they drown, drowning things 
will twice rise to the surface ; then rise again, to sink for 
evermore. So with Moby Dick — two days he’s floated — to- 
morrow will be the third. Aye, men, he’ll rise once more, — 
but only to spout his last ! D’ye feel brave men, brave ? ” 

“ As fearless fire,” cried Stubb. 

“ And as mechanical,” muttered Ahab. Then as the men 
went forward, he muttered on : — “ The things called omens! 
And yesterday I talked the same to Starbuck there, concern- 
ing my broken boat. Oh ! how valiantly I seek to drive 
out of others’ hearts what’s clinched so fast in mine ! — The 
p arse e — the Parsee ! — gone, gone ? and he was to go be- 


522 


MOBY DICK. 


fore : — but still was to be seen again ere T could perish — 
How’s that ? — There’s a riddle now might bailie all the 
lawyers backed by the ghosts of the whole line of judges : — 
like a hawk’s beak it pecks my brain. I'll , I'll solve it, 
though ! ” 

When dusk descended, the whale was still in sight to lee- 
ward. 

So once more the sail was shortened, and everything passed 
nearly as on the previous night ; only, the sound of ham- 
mers, and the hum of the grindstone was heard till nearly 
daylight, as the men toiled by lanterns in the complete and 
careful rigging of the spare boats and sharpening their fresh 
weapons for the morrow. Meantime, of the broken keel of 
Ahab’s wrecked craft the carpenter made him another leg ; 
while still as on the night before, slouched Ahab stood fixed 
within his scuttle ; his hid heliotrope glance anticipatingly 
gone backward on its dial ; sat due eastward for the earliest 
sun. 


CHAPTER CXXXV. 

THE CHASE. THIRD DAY. 

The morning of the third day dawned fair and fresh, and 
once more the solitary night-man at the fore-mast-head was 
relieved by crowds of the daylight look-outs, who dotted 
every mast and almost every- spar. 

“ D’ye see him ? ” cried Ahab ; but the whale was not yet 
in sight. 

“In his infallible wake, though ; but follow that wake, 
that’s all. Helm there; steady, as thou goest, and hast been 
going. What a lovely day again ! were it a new-made world, 
and made for a summer-house to the angels, and this morn- 
ing the first of its throwing open to them, a fairer day could 
not dawn upon that world. Here’s food for thought, had 
Ahab time to think ; but Ahab never thinks ; he only feels, 
feels, feels, that's tingling enough for mortal man! to think’s 
audacity. God only has that right and privilege. Thinking 
is, or ought to be, a coolness and a calmness ; and our poor 
hearts throb, and our poor brains beat too much for that. 
And yet, I’ve sometimes thought my brain was very calm 
— frozen calm, this old skull cracks so, like a glass in which 
the contents turn to ice, and shiver it. And still this hair 
is growing now ; this moment growing, and heat must breed 


MOBY DICK. 


523 


it ; but no, it’s like that sort of common grass that will grow 
anywhere, between the earthly clefts of Greenland ice or in 
Vesuvius lava. How the wild winds blow it ; they whip 
it about me as the torn shreds of split sails lash the tossed 
ship they cling to. A vile wind that has no doubt blown 
ere this through prison corridors and cells, and wards of 
hospitals, and ventilated them, and now comes blowing 
hither as innocent as fleeces. Out upon it ! — it’s tainted. 
Were I the wind, I’d blow no more on such a wicked, miser- 
able world. I’d crawl somewhere to a cave, and slink there. 
And yet, ’tis a noble and heroic thing, the wind! who ever 
conquered it ? In every fight it has the last and bitterest 
blow. Run tilting at it, and you but run through it. Ha ! 
a coward wind that strikes stark naked men, but will not 
stand to receive a single blow. Even Ahab is a braver thing 
■ — a nobler thing than that. Would now the wind but had 
a body ; but all the things that most exasperate and outrage 
mortal man all these things are bodiless, but only bodiless 
as objects, not as agents. There’s a most special, a most 
cunning, oh, a most malicious difference ! And yet, I say 
again, and swear it now, that there’s something all glorious 
and gracious in the wind. These warm Trade Winds, at 
least, that in the clear heavens blow straight on, in strong 
and steadfast, vigorous mildness ; and veer not from their 
mark, however the baser currents of the sea may turn and 
tack, and mightiest Mississippi of the land swift and swerve 
about, uncertain where to go at last. And by the eternal 
Poles ! these same Trades that so directly blow my good 
ship on ; these Trades, or something like them — something 
so unchangeable, and full as strong, blow my keeled soul 
along ! To it ! Aloft there ! What d’ye see ?” 

“ Nothing, sir.” 

“ Nothing ! and noon at hand ! The doubloon goes a- 
begging ! See the sun ! Aye, aye, it must be " so. I’ve 
oversailed him. How, got the start? Aye, lie’s chasing 
me now ; not I, him — that’s bad ; I might have known it, 
too. Fool ! the lines — the harpoons he’s towing. Aye, aye, 
I have run him by last night. About ! about ! Come down, 
all of ye, but the regular look-outs ! Man the braces ! ” 

Steering as she had done, the wind had been somewhat 
on the Pequod’s quarter, so that now being pointed in the 
reverse direction, the braced ship sailed hard upon the 
breeze as she rechurned the cream in her own white 'wake. 

“Against the wind he now steers for the open jaw,” 


524 


MOBY DICK. 


murmured Starbuck to himself, as he coiled the new-hauled 
main-brace upon the rail. “ God keep us, but already my 
bones feel damp within me, and from the inside wet my 
flesh. I misdoubt me that I disobey my God in obeying 
him ! ” 

“ Stand by to sway me up ! ” cried Ahab, advancing to 
the hempen basket. “ We should meet him soon.” 

“Aye, aye, sir,” and straightway Starbuck did Ahab’s 
bidding, and once more Ahab swung on high. 

A whole hour now passed ; gold-beaten out to ages. Time 
itself now held long breaths with keen suspense. But at 
last, some three points off the weather-bow, Ahab descried 
the spout again, and instantly from the three mast-heads 
three shrieks went up as if the tongues of fire had voiced 
it. 

“ Forehead to forehead I meet thee, this third time, Moby 
Dick ! On deck there ! — brace sharper up ; crowd her into 
the wind’s eye. He’s too far off to lower yet, Mr. Starbuck. 
The sails shake ! Stand over that helmsman with a top- 
maul! So, so ; he travels fast, and I must down. But let 
me have one more good round look aloft here at the sea ; 
there’s time for that. An old, old sight, and yet somehow 
so young ; aye, and not changed a wink since I first saw it, 
a boy, from the sand-hills of Nantucket! The same! — the 
same ! — tlm same to Noah as to me. There’s a soft shower 
to leewardT Such lovely leewardings ! They must lead 
somewhere — to something else than common land, more 
palmy than the palms. Leeward! the white whale goes 
that way ; look to windward, then ; the better if the bit- 
terer quarter. But good-bye, good-bye, old mast-head! 
What’s this ? — green ? aye, tiny mosses in these warped 
cracks. No such green weather stains on Ahab’s head! 
There’s the difference now between man’s old age and 
matter’s. But aye, old mast, we both grow old together; 
sound in our hulls, though, are we not, my ship? Aye, 
minus a leg, that’s all. By heaven this dead wood has the 
better of my live flesh every way. I can’t compare with it ; 
and I’ve known some ships made of dead trees outlast the 
lives of men made of the most vital stuff of vital fathers. 
Wliat’s that he said? he should still go before me, my 
pilot ; and yet to be seen again? But where? Will I have 
eyes at the bottom of the sea, supposing I descend those 
endless stairs ? and all night I’ve been sailing from him, 
wherever he did sink to. Aye, aye, like many more thou 


MOBY DICK. 


525 


told’st direful truth as touching thyself, O Parsee ; but, 
Ahab, there thy shot fell short. Good-bye, mast-head- 
keep a good eye upon the whale, the while I’m gone. We’ll 
talk to-morrow, nay, to-night, when the white whale lies 
down there, tied by head and tail.” 

He gave the word ; and still gazing round him, was 
steadily lowered through the cloven blue air to the deck. 

In due time the boats were lowered ; but as standing in 
his shallop’s stern, Ahab just hovered upon the point of the 
descent, he waved to the mate,— who held one of the tackle- 
ropes on deck — and bade him pause. 

“ Starbuck ! ” 

“Sir?” 

“For the third time my soul’s ship starts upon this voy- 
age, Starbuck.” 

“ Aye, sir, thou wilt have it so.” 

“ Some ships sail from their ports, and ever afterwards 
are missing, Starbuck ! ” 

“ Truth, sir : saddest truth.” 

“ Some men die at ebb tide; some at low water; some at 
the full of the flood ; — and I feel now like a billow that’s 
all one crested comb, Starbuck. I am old ; — shake hands 
with me, man.” 

Their hands met ; their eyes fastened ; Starbuck’s tears 
the glue. 

“ Oil, my captain, my captain ! — noble heart — go not — go 
not ! — see, it’s a brave man that weeps ; how great the agony 
of the persuasion then ! ” 

“ Lower away ! ” — cried Ahab, tossing the mate’s arm from 
him. “ Stand by the crew ! ” 

In an instant the boat was pulling round close under the 
stern. 

“ The sharks ! the sharks ! ” cried a voice from the low 
cabin- window there ; “ O master, my master, come back ! ” 

But Ahab heard nothing ; for his own voice was high- 
lifted then ; and the boat leaped on. 

Yet the voice spake true ; for scarce had he pushed from 
the ship, when numbers of sharks, seemingly rising from 
out the dark waters beneath the hull, maliciously snapped 
at the blades of the oars, every time they dipped in the 
water ; and in this way accompanied the boat with their 
bites. It is a thing not uncommonly happening to the 
whale-boats in those swarming seas ; the sharks at times 
apparently following them in the same prescient way that 


526 


MOBY DICK. 


vultures hover over the banners of marching regiments in 
the east. But these were the first sharks 
observed by the Pequod since the >, T v bite V- ha I ad on 

first descried ; and whether it was t nd • ‘a , - ; 

all such tiger-yellow barbarians, and ihvi fibre 
more musky to the senses of the sha ’ • - Some- 

times well known to affect them, — huvvever it was, they 
seemed to follow that one boat without molesting the others. 

“ Heart of wrought steel ! ” murmured Starbuck gazing 
over the side, and following with his eyes the receding boat 
— “canst thou yet ring boldly to that sight ? — lowering thy 
keel among ravening sharks, and followed by them, open- 
mouthed to the chase ; and this the critical third day ? — 
For when three days flow together in one continuous intense 
pursuit ; be sure the first is the morning, the second the 
noon, and the third the evening and the end of that thing — 
be that end what it may. Oh ! my God ! what is this that 
shoots through me, and leaves me so deadly calm, yet ex- 
pectant, — fixed at the top of a shudder ! Future things swim 
before me, as in empty outlines and skeletons ; all the past 
is somehow grown dim. Mary, girl ! thou fadest in pale 
glories behind me ; boy ! I seem to see but thy eyes grown 
wondrous blue. Strangest problems of life seem clearing; 
but clouds sweep between — Is my journey’s end coming? My 
legs feel faint ; like his who has footed it all day. Feel thy 
heart, — beats it yet ? — Stir thyself, Starbuck ! — stave it off 
— move, move ! speak aloud ! — Mast-head there ! See ye 
my boy’s hand on the hill? — Crazed; — aloft there! — keep 
thy keenest eye upon the boats : — mark well the whale ! — 
IIo ! again ! — drive off that hawk ! see ! he pecks — he tears 
the vane ” — pointing to the red flag flying at the main-truck 
— “ Ha ! he soars away with it ! — Where’s the old man now? 
sees’t thou that sight, oh Ahab ! — shudder, shudder ! ” 

The boats had not gone very far, when by a signal from 
the mast-heads — a downward pointed arm, Ahab knew that 
the whale had sounded ; but intending to be near him at the 
next rising, he held on liis way a little sideways from the 
vessel; the becharmed crew maintaining the profoundest 
silence, as the head-beat waves hammered and hammered 
against the opposing bow. 

“ Drive, drive in your nails, oh ye waves ! to their utter- 
most heads drive them in ! ye but strike a thing without a 
lid ; and no coffin and no hearse can be mine : — and henq) 
only can kill me ! Ha ! ha ! ” 


MOBY DICK. 


527 


Suddenly the waters around them slowly swelled in 
broad circles ; then quickly upheaved, as if sideways sliding 
from a submerged berg of ice, swiftly rising to the surface. 
A low rumbling sound was heard ; a subterraneous hum ; 
and then all held their breaths ; as bedraggled with trail- 
ing ropes, and harpoons, arid lances, a vast form shot 
lengthwise, but obliquely from the sea. Shrouded in a 
thin drooping veil of mist, it hovered for a moment in the 
rainbowed air ; and then fell swamping back into the deep. 
Crushed thirty feet upwards, the waters flashed for an in- 
stant like heaps of fountains, then brokenly sank in a 
shower of flakes, leaving the circling surface creamed like 
new milk round the marble trunk of the whale. 

“ Give way ! ” cried Ahab to the oarsmen, and the boats 
darted forward to the attack ; but maddened by yesterday’s 
fresh irons that corroded in him, Moby Dick seemed com- 
binedly possessed by all the angels that fell from heaven. 
The wide tears of welded tendons overspreading his broad 
white forehead, beneath the transparent skin, looked knitted 
together ; as head on, he came churning his tail among the 
boats ; and once more flailed them apart ; spilling out the 
irons and lances from the two mates’ boats, and dashing in 
one side of the upper part of their bows, but leaving Ahab’s 
almost without a scar. 

While Daggoo and Queequeg were stopping the strained 
planks ; and as. the whale swimming out from them, turned, 
and showed one entire flank as he shot by them again; 
at that moment a quick cry went up. Lashed round and 
round to the fish’s back ; pinioned in the turns upon turns 
in which, during the past night, the whale had reeled the 
involutions of the lines around him, the half torn body of 
the Parsee was seen ; his sable raiment frayed to shreds ; 
his distended eyes turned full upon old Ahab. 

The harpoon dropped from his hand. 

“ Befooled, befooled ! ” — drawing in a long lean breath — 
“Aye, Parsee! I see thee again— Aye, and thou goest 
before ; and this, this then is the hearse that thou didst 
promise. But I hold thee to the last letter of thy word. 
Where is the second hearse ? Away, mates, to the ship ! 
those boats are useless now ; repair them if ye can in time, 
and return to me ; if not, Ahab is enough to die — Down, 
men ! the first thing that but offers to jump from this boat 
I stand in, that thing I harpoon. Ye are not other men, 


528 


MOBY DICK. 


but my arms and my legs ; and so obey me.— Where’s the 
whale ? gone down again ? ” 

But he looked too nigh the boat ; for as if bent upon es- 
caping with the corpse he bore, and as if the particular 
place of the last encounter had been but a stage in his lee- 
ward voyage, Moby Dick was now again steadily swimming 
forward ; and had almost passed the ship, — which thus far 
had been sailing in the contrary direction to him, though 
for the present her headway had been stopped. He seemed 
swimming with his utmost velocity, and now only intent 
upon pursuing his own straight path in the sea. 

“ Oh ! Ahab,” cried Starbuck, “ not too late is it, even 
now, the third day, to desist. See ! Moby Dick seeks thee 
not. It is thou, thou, that madly seekest him ! ” 

Setting sail to the rising wind, the lonely boat was 
swiftly impelled to leeward, by both oars and canvas. 
And at last when Ahab was sliding by the vessel, so near 
as plainly to distinguish Starbuck’s face as he leaned over 
the rail, he hailed him to turn the vessel about, and follow 
him, not too swiftly, at a judicious interval. Glancing up- 
wards, he saw Tashtego, Queequeg, and Daggoo, eagerly 
mounting to the three mast-heads; while the oarsmen were 
rocking in the two staved boats which had but just been 
hoisted to the side, and were busily at work in repairing 
them. One after the other, through the port-holes, as he 
sped, he also caught flying glimpses of Stubb and Flask, 
busying themselves on deck among bundles of new irons 
and lances. As he saw all this ; as he heard the hammers 
in the broken boats ; far other hammers seemed driving a 
nail into his heart. But he rallied. And now marking 
that the vane or flag was gone from the main-mast-head, 
he shouted to Tashtego, who had just gained that perch, 
to descend again for another flag, and a hammer and nails, 
and so nail it to the mast. 

Whether fagged by the three days’ running chase, and 
the resistance to his swimming in the knotted hamper he 
bore; or whether it was some latent deceitfulness and 
malice in him : whichever was true, the White Whale’s 
way now began to abate, as it seemed, from the boat so 
rapidly nearing him once more ; though indeed the whale’s 
last start had not been so long a one as before. And still 
as Ahab glided over the waves the unpitying sharks 
accompanied him ; and so pertinaciously stuck to the boat ; 
and so continually bit at the plying oars, that the blades 


MOBY DICK. 


529 


became jagged and crunched, and left small splinters in 
the sea, at almost every dip.’ 

“ Heed them not ! those teeth but give new rowlocks to 
your oars. Pull on ! ’tis the better rest, the shark’s jaw 
than the yielding water.” 

“ But at every bite, sir, the thin blades grow smaller and 
smaller ! ” 

“ They will last long enough ! pull on ! — But who can 
tell ” — he muttered — “ whether these sharks swim to feast 
on the whale or on Ahab ? — But pull on ! Aye, all alive, 
now — we near him. The helm ! take the helm ; let me 
pass,” — and so saying, two of the oarsmen helped him for- 
ward to the bows of the still flying boat. 

At length as the craft was cast to one side, and ran rang- 
ing along with the White Whale’s flank, he seemed strangely 
oblivious of its advance — as the whale sometimes will — and 
Ahab was fairly within the smoky mountain mist, which, 
thrown off from the whale’s spout, curled round his great, 
Monadnock hump ; he was even thus close to him ; when, 
with body arched back, and both arms lengthwise 
high-lifted to the poise, he darted his fierce iron, and his 
far fiercer curse into the hated whale. As both steel and 
curse sank to the socket, as if sucked into a morass, Moby 
Dick sideways writhed ; spasmodically rolled his nigli 
flank against the bow, and, without staving a hole in it, so 
suddenly canted the boat over, that had it not been for the 
elevated part of the gunwale to which he then clung, Ahab 
would once more have been tossed into the sea. As it was, 
three of the oarsmen — who foreknew not the precise instant 
of the dart, and were therefore unprepared for its effects — 
these were flung out ; but so fell, that, in an instant two of 
them clutched the gunwale again, and rising to its level on 
a combing wave, hurled themselves bodily inboard again ; 
the third man helplessly dropping astern, but still afloat 
and swimming. 

Almost simultaneously, with a mighty volition of ungrad- 
uated, instantaneous swiftness, the White Whale darted 
through th.e weltering sea. But when Ahab cried out to 
the steersman to take new turns with the line, and hold it 
so ; and commanded the crew to turn round on their seats, 
and tow the boat up to the mark ; the moment the treach- 
erous line felt that double strain and tug, it snapped in the 
empty air ! 


34 


530 


MOBY DICK. 


“What breaks in me? Some sinew cracks ! — ’tis whole 
again ; oars ! oars ! Burst in upon him ! ” 

Hearing the tremendous rush of the sea-crashing boat, 
the whale wheeled round to present his blank forehead at 
bay ; but in that evolution, catching sight of the nearing 
black hull of the ship ; seemingly seeing in it the source of 
all his persecutions ; bethinking it — it may be — a larger and 
nobler foe ; of a sudden, he bore down upon its advancing 
prow, smiting his jaws amid fiery showers of foam. 

Ahab staggered ; his hand smote his forehead. “ I grow 
blind ; hands ! stretch out before me that I may yet grope 
my way. Is’t night ? ” 

“ The whale ! The ship ! ” cried the cringing oarsmen. 
“ Oars ! oars ! Slope downwards to thy depths, O sea, 
that ere it be for ever too late, Ahab may slide this last, last 
time upon his mark ! I see : the ship ! the ship ! Dash on, 
my men ! Will ye not save my ship ? ” 

But as the oarsmen violently forced their boat through 
the sledge-hammering seas, the before whale-smitten bow- 
ends of two planks burst through, and in an instant almost, 
the temporarily disabled boat lay nearly level with the 
waves ; its half -wading, splashing crew, trying hard to stop 
the gap and bale out the pouring water. 

Meantime, for that one beholding instant, Tashtego’s 
mast-head hammer remained suspended in his hand ; and 
the red flag, half-wrapping him as with a plaid, then 
streamed itself straight out from him, as his own forward- 
flowing heart ; while Starbuck and Stubb, standing upon 
the bowsprit beneath, caught sight of the down-coming 
monster just as soon as he. 

“ The whale, the whale ! Up helm, up helm ! Oh, all ye 
sweet powers of air, now hug me close ! Let not Starbuck 
die, if die he must, in a woman’s fainting fit. Up helm, I 
say — ye fools, the jaw ! the jaw ! Is this the end of all my 
bursting prayers? all my life-long fidelities? Oh, Ahab, 
Ahab, lo, thy work. Steady! helmsman, steady. Nay, 
nay ! Up helm again ! He turns to meet us ! Oh, his 
unappeasable brow drives on towards one, whose duty tells 
him he cannot depart. My God, stand by me now ! ” 

“ Stand not by me, but stand under me, whoever you are 
that will now help Stubb ; for Stubb, too, sticks here. I 
grin at thee, thou grinning whale ! Who ever helped Stubb, 
or kept Stubb awake, but Stubb’s own unwinking eye? 
And now poor Stubb goes to bed upon a mattress that is all 


MOBY DICK. 


531 


too soft ; would it were stuffed with brushwood ! I grin at 
thee, thou grinning whale ! Look ye, sun, moon and stars ! 
I call ye assassins of as good a fellow as ever spouted up his 
ghost. For all that, I would yet ring glasses with ye, would 
ye but hand the pup ! Oh, oh, oh, oh ! thou grinning whale, 
but there’ll be plenty of gulping soon ! Why fly ye not, O 
Ahab ? For me, off shoes and jacket to it ; let Stubb die in 
his drawers ! A most mouldy and over salted death, though ; 
■ — cherries ! cherries ! cherries ! Oh, Flask, for one red 
cherry ere we die ! ” 

“ Cherries? I only wish that we were where they grow. 
Oh, Stubb, I hope my poor mother’s drawn my part-pay ere 
this ; if not, few coppers will now come to her, for the voy- 
age is up.” 

From the ship’s bows, nearly all the seamen now hung 
inactive; hammers, bits of plank, lances, and harpoons, 
mechanically retained in their hands, just as they had 
darted from their various employments ; all their enchanted 
eyes intent upon the whale, which from side to side strange- 
ly vibrating his predestinating head, sent a broad band of 
overspreading semicircular foam before him as he rushed. 
Retribution, swift vengeance, eternal malice were in his 
whole aspect, and spite of all that mortal man could do, the 
solid white buttress of his forehead smote the ship’s star- 
board bow, till men and timbers reeled. Some fell flat upon 
their faces. Like dislodged trucks, the heads of the har- 
pooners aloft shook on their bull-like necks. Through the 
breach, they heard the waters pour, as mountain torrents 
down a flume. 

“ The ship ! The hearse ! — the second hearse ! ” cried 
Ahab from the boat ; “ its wood could only be American ! ” 

Diving beneath the settling ship, the whale ran quivering 
along its keel ; but turning under water, swiftly shot to the 
surface again, far off the other bow, but within a few yards 
of Ahab’s boat, where, for a time, he lay quiescent. 

“ I turn my body from the sun. What ho, Tashtego ! let 
me hear thy hammer. Oh ! ye three unsurrendered spires 
of mine ; thou uncracked keel ; and only god-bullied hull ; 
thou firm deck, and haughty helm, and Pole-pointed prow, 
— death-glorious ship ! must ye then perish, and without 
me ? Am I cut off from the last fond pride of meanest 
shipwrecked captains ? Oh, lonely death on lonely life ! 
Oh, now I feel my topmost greatness lies in my tcomost 
grief. Ho, ho ! from all your furthest bounds, pour ye now 


532 


MOBY DICK. 


in, ye bold billows of my whole foregone life, and top this 
one piled comber of my death ! Towards thee I roll, thou 
all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple 
with thee ; from hell’s heart I stab at thee ; for hate’s sake 
I spit my last breath at thee. Sink all coffins and all 
hearses to one common pool ! and since neither can be mine 
let me then tow to pieces, while still chasing thee, though 
tied to thee, thou damned whale! Thus, I give up the 
spear ! ” 

The harpoon was darted; the stricken whale flew for- 
ward; with igniting velocity the line ran through the 
groove ; — ran foul. Ahab stooped to clear it ; he did clear 
it ; but the flying turn caught him round the neck, and 
voicelessly as Turkish mutes bowstring their victim, he 
was shot out of the boat, ere the crew knew he was gone. 
Next instant, the heavy eyesplice in the rope’s final end 
flew out of the stark-empty tub, knocked down an oars- 
man, and smiting the sea, disappeared in its depths. 

For an instant, the tranced boat’s crew stood still ; then 
turned. “ The ship ? Great God, where is the ship ? ” 
Soon they through dim, bewildering mediums saw her side- 
long fading phantom, as in the gaseous Fata Morgana ; 
only the uppermost masts out of water ; while fixed by in- 
fatuation, or fidelity, or fate, to their once lofty perches, 
the pagan harpooners still maintained their sinking look- 
outs on the sea. And now, concentric circles seized the lone 
boat itself, and all its crew, and each floating oar, and every 
lance-pole, and spinning, animate and inanimate, all round 
and round in one vortex, carried the smallest chip of the 
Pequod out of sight. 

But as the last whelmings intermixingly poured them- 
selves over the sunken head of the Indian at the mainmast, 
leaving a few inches of the erect spar yet visible, together 
with long streaming yards of the flag, which calmly un- 
dulated, with ironical coincidings, over the destroying 
billows they almost touched ; — at that instant, a red arm 
and a hammer hovered backwardly uplifted in the open air, 
in the act of nailing the flag faster and yet faster to the 
subsiding spar. A sky-hawk that tauntingly had followed 
the main-truck downwards from its natural home among 
the stars, pecking at the flag, and incommoding Tashtego 
there ; this bird now chanced to intercept its broad flutter- 
ing wing between the hammer and the wood ; and simul- 
taneously feeling that etherial thrill, the submerged savage 


MOB Y DICK. 


588 


beneath, in his death-gasp, kept his hammer frozen there ; 
and so the bird of heaven, with archangelic shrieks, and his 
imperial beak thrust upwards, and his whole captive form 
folded in the flag of Ahab, went down with his ship, which, 
like Satan, would not sink to hell till she had dragged a 
living part of heaven along with her, and helmeted herself 
with it. 

Now small fowls flew screaming over the yet yawning 
gulf ; a sullen white surf beat against its steep sides ; then 
all collapsed, and the great shroud of the sea rolled on as 
it rolled five thousand years ago. 


EPILOGUE. 

“ AND I ONLY AM ESCAPED ALONE TO TELL THEE.” 

Job. 

The drama’s done. Why then here does any one step forth ?— 
Because one did survive the wreck. 

It so chanced, that after the Parsee’s disappearance, I was he whom 
the Fates ordained to take the place of Ahab’s bowsman, when that 
bowsman assumed the vacant post ; the same, who, when on the last 
day the three men were tossed from out the rocky boat, was dropped 
astern So, floating on the margin of the ensuing scene, and in full 
sight of it, when the half-spent suction of the sunk ship reached me, I 
was then, but slowly, drawn towards the closing vortex. When I reached 
it, it had subsided to a creamy pool. Round and round, then, and ever 
contracting towards the button-like black bubble at the axis of that 
slowly wheeling circle, like another Ixion I did revolve. Till, gaining 
that vital centre, the black bubble upward burst ; and now, liberated 
by reason of its cunning spring, and, owing to its great buoyancy, rising 
with great force, the coffin life-buoy shot lengthwise from the. sea, fell 
over, and floated by my side. Buoyed up by Uiat coffin, for almost one 
whole day and night, I floated on a soft and dirge-like main. The un- 
harming sharks, they glided by as if with padlocks on their mouths ; 
the savage sea-hawks sailed with sheathed beaks. On the second day, 
a sail drew near, nearer, and picked me up at last. It was the devious- 
cruising Rachel, that in her retracing search after her missing children, 
only found another orphan. 







ETYMOLOGY. 


(supplied by a late consumptive usher to a gram- 

MaR SCHOOL.) 


The pale Usher — threadbare in coat, heart, body, and brain ; I see 
him now. He was ever dusting his old lexicons and grammars, with a 
queer handkerchief, mockingly embellished with all the gay flags of all 
the known nations of the world. He loved to dust his old grammars ; 
it somehow mildly reminded him of his mortality. 





ETYMOLOGY 


“ While you take in hand to school others, and to teach them by what 
name a wliale-fish is to be called in our tongue, leaving out, through 
ignorance, the letter H, which almost alone maketh up the signification 
of the word, you deliver that which is not true.” Hackluyt. 


‘‘WHALE. * * * Sw. and Dan. hval. This animal is named 
from roundness or rolling; for in Dan. hvalt is arched or vaulted.” 

Webster's Dictionary. 

“WHALE. * * * It is more immediately from the Dut. and Ger. 
Wallen; a.s. Walw-ian, to roll, to wallow.” 

Richardson' s Dictionary , 


CETUS, 

WHCEL, 

HVALT, 

WAL, 

HWAL, 

WHALE, 

WHALE, 

BALEINE, 

BALLENA, 

PEKEE-NUEE-NUEE, 

PEHEE-NUEE-NUEE, 


Latin. 

Anglo-Saxon . 

Danish. 

Dutch. 

Swedish. 

Icelandic. 

English. 

French. 

Svanish. 

Fejee. 

Erromangoan . 


EXTRACTS. 


(Supplied by' a Sub-Sub-Librarian.) 


It will be seen that this mere painstaking burrower and grub-worm 
of a poor devil of a Sub-Sub appears to have gone through the long 
Vaticans and street-stalls of the earth, picking up whatever random 
allusions to whales he could anyways find in any book whatsoever, 
sacred or profane. Therefore you must not, in every case at least take 
the higgledy-piggledy whale statements, however authentic, in these 
extracts, for veritable gospel cetology. Far from it. As touching the 
ancient authors generally, as well as the poets here appearing, these 
extracts are solely valuable or entertaining, as affording a glancing bird s- 
eye view of what has been promiscuously said, thought, fancied, and 


538 


EXTRACTS. 


sung of Leviathan, by many nations and generations, including our 
own. 

So fare thee well, poor devil of a Sub-Sub, whose commentator I am. 
Thou belongest to that hopeless, sallow tribe which no wine of this 
world will ever warm ; and for whom even Pale Sherry would be too 
rosy-strong; but with whom one sometimes loves to sit, and feel poor- 
devilish, too ; and grow convivial upon tears ; and say to them bluntly, 
with full eyes and empty glasses, and in not altogether unpleasant sad- 
ness — Give it up, Sub-Subs ! For by how much the more pains ye take 
to please the world, by so much the more shall ye forever go thankless ! 
Would that I could clear out Hampton Court and the Tuileries for ye! 
But gulp down your tears and hie aloft to the royal-mast with your 
hearts ; for your friends who have gone before are clearing out the seven- 
storied heavens, and making refugees of long-pampered Gabriel, 
Michael, and Raphael, against your coming. Here ye strike but splintered 
hearts together — there, ye shall strike unsplinterable glasses ! 


EXTRACTS. 

“ And God created great whales.” 

Genesis. 

“Leviathan maketh a path to shine after him ; 

One would think the deep to be lioary.” 

. Job. 

“ Now the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah.” 

Jonah. 

“ There go the ships ; there is that Leviathan whom thou hast made 
to play therein. ” Psalms. 

“ In that day, the Lord w r ith his sore, and great, and strong sword, 
shall punish Leviathan the piercing serpent, even Leviathan that 
crooked serpent ; and he shall slay the dragon that is in the sea.” 

Isaiah. 

“ And what thing soever besides cometh within the chaos of this 
monster’ s mouth, be it beast, boat, or stone, down it goes all incontinently 
that foul great swallow of his, and perislieth in the bottomless gulf of 
his paunch.” 

Holland's Plutarch' s Morals." 

“ The Indian Sea breedeth the most and the biggest fishes that are : 
among which the Whales and nirlpooles called Balsene, take up as 
much in length as four acres or ai pens of land.” Holland's Pliny. 

“Scarcely had we proceeded tw r o days on the sea, when about sunrise 
a great many Whales and other monsters of the sea, appeared. Among 
the former, one was of a most monstrous size. * * This came towards 
us, open-mouthed, raising the waves on all sides, and beating the sea 
before him into a foam.” Tooke's Lucian. 

“ The True History." 

“ He visited this country also with a view of catching horsew'hales, 
which had bones of very great value for their teeth, of which he brought 
some to the king. * * * The best whales w r ere catclied in his ow r n 


EXTRACTS. 


539 


country, of which some were forty-eight, some fifty yards long. He 
said that he was one of six who had killed sixty in two days.” 

Other or Octher's verbal narrative taken down 
from his mouth by King Alfred. A. D. 890. 

“ And whereas all the other things, whether beast or vessel, that 
enter into the dreadful gulf of this monster’s (whale’s) mouth, are im- 
mediately lost and swallowed up, the sea-gudgeon retires into it in great 
security, and there sleeps.” 

Montaigne. — Apology for Raimond Sebond. 

“ Let us fly, let us fly ! Old Nick take me if it is not Leviathan de- 
scribed by the noble prophet Moses in the life of patient Job.” 

Rabelais. 

“ This whale’s liver was two cart-loads.” 

Stowe's Annals. 


“The great Leviathan that maketh the seas to seethe like boiling 
pan.” Lord Bacon's Version of the Psalms. 

“ Touching that monstrous bulk of the whale or ork we have received 
nothing certain. They grow exceeding fat, insomuch that an incredible 
quantity of oil will be extracted out of one whale.” 

Ibid “ History of Life and Death." 

“ The sovereignest thing on earth isparmacetti for an inw r ard bruise.” 

King Henry. 

“ Very like a whale.” Hamlet. 

“ Which to secure, no skill of leach’s art 
Mote him availle, but to returne againe 
To his w r ound’s worker, that with lowly dart, 

Hinting his breast, had bred his restless paine, 

Like as the wuunded whale to shore flies thro’ the maine.” 

The Fairy Queen. 


“Immense as whales, the motion of whose vast bodies can in a 
peaceful calm trouble the ocean till it boil.” 

Sir William Davenant. Preface to Gondibert. 


“What spermacetti is, men might justly doubt, since the learned 
Hosmannus in his work of thirty years, saith plainly. Nescio quid 
sit .” 

Sir T. Browne. Of Sperma Ceti and the 
Sperma Ceti Whale. Vide his V. E. 


“Like Spencer’s Talus with his modern flail 
He threatens ruin with his ponderous tail. 
***** 


Their fixed jav’lins in his side he wears, 

And on his back a grove of pikes appears.” 

Waller's Battle of the Summer Islands. 

“ By art is created that great Leviathan, called a Commonwealth or 
State— (in Latin, Civitas) which is but an artificial man.” 

Opening sentence of Hobbes's Leviathan. 


“ Silly Mansoul sw r allow r ed it 
sprat in the mouth of a whale.” 


without chewing, as if it had been a 
Pilgrim's Progress. 


540 


EXTRACTS . 


“ That sea beast 

Leviathan, which God of all his works 
Created hugest that swim the ocean stream.” 

Paradise Lost. 

“ There Leviathan, 

Hugest of living creatures, in the deep 
Stretched like a promontory sleeps or swims, 

And seems a moving land ; and at his gills 
Draws in, and at his breath spouts out a sea.” 

Ibid. 

“ ’the mighty whales which swim in a sea of water, and have a sea 
of oil swimming in them.” 

Fuller's Profane and Holy State. 

So close behind some promontory lie 

The hugh Leviathans to attend their prey, 

And give no chance, but swallow in the fry, 

Which through their gaping jaws mistake the way.” 

Dry den's Annus Mirabilis. 

“ While the whale is floating at the stern of the ship, they cut off his 
head, and tow it with a boat as near the shore as it will com? ; but it 
will be aground in twelve or thirteen feet water.” 

Thomas Edge's Ten Voyages to Spitzbergen in Purchass. 

“ In their way they saw many whales sporting in the ocean, and in 
wantonness fuzzing up the water through their pipes and vents, which 
nature has placed on their shoulders.” 

Sir T. Herbert's Voyages into Asia and Africa. 

Harris Coll. 

“ Here they saw such huge troops of whales, that they were forced to 
proceed with a great deal of caution for fear they should run their ship 
upon them.” 

Schouten' s Sixth Circumnavigation. 

“ We set sail from the Elbe, windN. E. in the ship called The Jonas- 
in-the Whale. * * * 

Some say the whale can’t open his mouth, but that is a fable. 
* * * 

They frequently climb up the masts to see whether they can see a 
whale, for the first discoverer has a ducat for his pains. * * * 

1 was told of a whale taken near Shetland, that had above a barrel of 
herrings in his belly. * * * 

One of our harpooneers told me that he caught once a whale in Spitz- 
bergen that was white all over.” 

A Voyage to Greenland, A.D. 1671. 

Harris Coll. 

“ Several whales have come in upon this coast {Fife). Anno 1652, 
one eighty feet in length of the whale-bone kind came in, which, (as I 
was informed) besides a vast quantity of oil, did afford 500 weight of 
baleen. The jaws of it stand for a gate in the garden of Pitferren.” 

Sibbald's Fife and Kinross. 

“ Myself have agreed to try whether I can master and kill this Sperma- 
ceti whale, for I could never hear of any of that sort that was killed by 
any man, such is his fierceness and swiftness.” 

Richard Strafford's Letter from the Bermudas. 

Phil. Trans. A. D. 1668. 


EXTRACTS. 


541 


“ Whales in the sea 
God’s voice obey.” 

N. E. Primer. 

“We saw also abundance of large whales, there being more in those 
southern seas, as I may say, by a hundred to one ; than we have to the 
northward of us.” 

Captain Cowley's Voyage round the Globe. A.D. 1729. 

*****“ an( j the breath of the whale is frequently attended 
with such an insupportable smell, as to bring on a disorder of the 
brain.” TJlloa' s South America. 

“ To fifty chosen sylphs of special note, 

We trust the important charge, the petticoat. 

Oft have we known that seven-fold fence to fail, 

Tho’ stuffed with hoops and armed with ribs of whale.” 

Rape of the Lock. 

“ If we compare land animals in respect to magnitude, with those 
that take up their abode in the deep, we shall find they will appear con- 
temptible in the comparison. The whale is doubtless the largest animal 
in creation.” Goldsmith. Nat. His. 

“ If you should write a fable for little fishes, you would make them 
speak like great whales.” Goldsmith to Johnson. 

“ In the afternoon we saw what was supposed to be a rock, but it was 
found to be a dead whale, which some Asiatics had killed, and were 
then towing ashore. They seemed to endeavor to conceal themselves 
behind the whale, in order to avoid being seen by us.” 

Cook's Voyages. 

“ The larger whales, they seldom venture to attack. They stand in 
so great dread of some of them, that when out at sea they are afraid to 
mention even their names, and carry dung, lime-stone, juniper-wood, 
and some other articles of the same nature in their boats, in order to 
terrify and prevent their too near approach.” 

Uno Von Troil's Letters on Banks' s and 
Solander's Voyage to Iceland in 1772. 

“ The Spermacetti Whale found by the Nantuckois, is an active, fierce 
animal, and requires vast address and boldness in the fishermen.” 

Thomas Jefferson's Whale Memorial to the 
French Minister in 1778. 

“ And pray, sir, what in the world is equal to it ? ” 

Edmund Burke' s reference in Parliament 
to the Nantucket Whale-Fishery. 

“ Spain a great whale stranded on the shores of Europe.” 

Edmund Burke , ( somewhere .) 

“ A tenth branch of the king’s ordinary revenue, said to be grounded 
on the consideration of his guarding and protecting the seas from pirates 
and robbers, is the right to royal fish, which are whale and sturgeon. 
And these, when either thrown ashore or caught near the coast, are the 
property of the king.” Blackstone . 


542 


EXTRACTS. 


“ Soon to the sport of death the crews repair: 

Rodmond unerring o’er his head suspends 
The barbed steel, and every turn attends.” 

Falconer's Shipwreck. 

“ Bright shone the roofs, the domes, the spires, 

And rockets blew self driven, 

To hang their momentary fire 
Around the vault of heaven. 

“ So fire with water to compare, 

The ocean serves on high, 

Up-spouted by a whale in air, 

To express unwieldy joy.” 

Cowper , on the Queen's Visit to London. 

“ Ten or fifteen gallons of blood are thrown out of the heart at a 
stroke, with immense velocity.” 

John Hunter's account of the dissection 

of a whale. (A small sized one.) 

“The aorta of a whale is larger in the bore than the main pipe of the 
water-works at London Bridge, and the water roaring in its passage 
through that pipe is inferior in impetus and velocity to the blood gush- 
ing from the whale’s heart.” Paley's Theology. 

“ The whale is a mammiferous animal without hind feet.” 

Baron Cuvier. 

“ In 40 degrees south, we saw Spermacetti Whales, hut did not take 
any till the first of May, the sea being than covered with them. 

Colnett's Voyage for the purpose of 
Extending the Spermacetti Whale Fishery. 

“ In the free element beneath me swam, 

Floundered and dived, in play, in cliace, in battle, 

Fishes of every color, form, and kind; 

Which language cannot paint, and mariner 
Had never seen ; from dread Leviathan 
To insect millions peopling every wave : 

Gather’d in shoals immense, like floating islands, 

Led by mysterious insincts through that waste 
And trackless region, though on every side 
Assaulted by voracious enemies, 

Whales, sharks, and monsters, arm’d in front or jaw 
With swords, saws, spiral horns, or hooked fangs.” 

Montgomery' s World before the Flood. 

“Io! Paean! Io! sing, 

To the finny people’s king. 

Not a mightier whale than this 
In the vast Atlantic is ; 

Not a fatter fish than he, 

Flounders round the Polar Sea.” 

Charles Lamb's Triumph of the Whale. 

“In the year 1690 some persons were on a high hill observing the 
whales spouting and sporting with each other, when one observed ; there 
— pointing to the sea — is a green pasture where our children’s grand- 
children will go for bread.” Obed Macy's History of Nantucket. 


EXTRACTS. 


543 


“I built a cottage for Susan and myself and made a gateway in the 
form of a Gothic Arch, by setting up a whale’s jaw bones.” Haw- 
thorne's Twice Told Tal&. 

“ She came to bespeak a monument for her first love, who had been 
killed by a whale in the Pacific ocean, no less than forty years ago,” 

Ibid. 

“No, Sir, ’tis a Right Whale,” answered Tom ; “ I saw his spout ; 
he threw up a pair of as pretty rainbows as a Christian would wish to 
look at. He’s a raal oil-butt, that fellow ! ” Cooper's Pilot. 

“ The papers were brought in, and we saw in the Berlin Gazette that 
whales had been introduced on the stage there.” 

Eckermann's Conversations with Goethe. 

“ My God ! Mr. Chace, what is the matter ? ” I answered, “ We have 
been stove by a whale.’ ’ 

“ Narrative of the Shipwreck of the Whale Ship 
Essex of Nantucket , which was attacked and 
; finally destroyed by a large Sperm Whale 
in the PaciUc Ocean." By Owen Chace of 
Nantucket , first mate of said vessel. New 
York. 1821. 

“ A mariner sat in the shrouds one night, 

The wind was piping free ; 

Now bright, now dimmed, was the moonlight pale, 

And the phospher gleamed in the wake of the whale 
As it floundered in the sea.” 

Elizabeth Oakes Smith. 

“ The quantity of line withdrawn from the different boats engaged 
in the capture of this one whale, amounted altogether to 10,440 yards 
or nearly six English miles.” * * * 

“ Sometimes the whale shakes its tremendous tail in the air, which, 
cracking like a whip, resounds to the distance of three or four miles.” 

Scoresby. 

“Mad with the agonies he endures from these fresh attacks, the 
infuriated Sperm Whale rolls over and over ; he rears his enormous 
head, and with wide expanded jaws snaps at everything around him ; 
he rushes at the boats with his head ; they are propelled before him 
with vast swiftness, and sometimes utterly destroyed. 

* * * It is a matter of great astonishment that the consideration 
of the habits of so interesting, and, in a commercial point of view, of 
so important an animal (as the Sperm Whale) should have been so en- 
tirely neglected, or should have excited so little curiosity among the 
numerous, and many of them competent observers, that of late years 
must have possessed the most abundant and the most convenient oppor- 
tunities of witnessing their habitudes.” 

Thomas Beal's History of the Sperm Whale , 1839. 

“ The Cachalot ” (Sperm Whale) “ is not only better armed than the 
True Whale” (Greenland or Right Whale) “ in possessing a formidable 
weapon at either extremity of its body, but also more frequently dis- 
plays a disposition to employ these weapons offensively, and in a man- 
ner at once so artful, bold, and mischievous, as to lead to its being re- 


544 


EXTRACTS. 


gardecl as the most dangerous to attack of all the known species of the 
whale tribe.’ ’ Frederick Debell Bennett's Whaling 

Voyage Mound the Globe. 1840. 

October 13. “ There she blows,” was sung out from the mast-head. 

“ Where away ?” demanded the captain. 

“ Three points off the lee bow, sir.” 

“ Raise up your wheel. Steady ! ” 

“ Steady, sir.” 

“ Mast-head ahoy ! Do you see that whale now ? ” 

‘ ‘ Ay ay, sir ! A shoal of Sperm Whales ! There she blows ! There 
she breaches ! ” 

‘ ‘ Sing out ! sing out out every time ! ” 

4 4 Ay ay, sir ! There she blows ! there — there — thar she blows — 
bowes — bo-o-o-s !” 

“How far off ?” 

44 Two miles and a half.” 

44 Thunder and lightning ! so near ! Call all lands ! ” 

J. Ross Browne's Etchings 
of a Whaling Cruise. 1846. 

4 4 The Whale-ship Globe, on board of which vessel occurred the 
horrid transactions we are about to relate, belonged to the island of 
Nantucket.” 44 Narrative of the Globe Mutiny , by 

Lay and Hussey survivors. A. D. 1828. 

44 Being once pursued by a whale which he had w r ounded, he parried 
the assault for some time with a lance ; but the furious monster at length 
rushed on the boat ; himself and comrades only being preserved by 
leaping into the water when they saw the onset was inevitable.” 

Missionary Journal of Tyerman and Bennett. 

44 Nantucket itself,” said Mr. Webster, “ is a very striking and pecul- 
iar portion of the National interest. There is a population of eight or 
nine thousand persons, living here in the sea, adding largely every 
year to the National wealth by the boldest and most perservering indus- 
try,” Report of Daniel Webster's Speech in the 

U. S. Senate , on the application for the 
Erection of a Breakwater at Nantucket. 
1828. 

“The whale fell directly over him, and probably killed him in a 
moment.” 

44 The Whale and his Captors, or The Whaleman's 
Adventures and the Whale's Biography , gathered 
on the Homeward Cruise of the Commodore 
Preble." By the Rev. Henry T. Cheever. 

44 If you make the least damn bit of noise,” replied Samuel, “ I will 
send you to hell.” Life of Samuel Comstock ( the mutineer ), by his 
brother, William Comstock. Another Ver- 
sion of the whale-ship Globe narrative. 

44 The voyages of the Dutch and English to the Northern Ocean, in 
order, if possible, to discover a passage through it to India, though 
they failed of their main object, laid open the haunts of the whale.” 

McCulloch' s Commercial Dictionary. 


EXTRACTS. 


545 


‘ ‘ These things are reciprocal ; the ball rebounds, only to bound for- 
ward again ; for now in laying open the haunts of the whale, the whale- 
men seem to have indirectly hit upon new clews to that same mystic 
North-West Passage.” From “ Something ” unpublished . 

“ It is impossible to meet a whale-ship on the ocean without being 
struck by her near appearance. The vessel under short sail, with look* 
outs at the mast-heads, eagerly scanning the wide expanse around 
them, has a totally different air from those engaged in a regular voyage.” 

Currents and Whaling. U. S. Ex. Ex. 

' ' Pedestrians in the vicinity of London and elsewhere may recollect 
having seen large curved bones set upright in the earth, either to form 
arches over gateways, or entrances to alcoves, and they may perhaps 
have been told that these were the ribs of whales.” 

Tales of a Whale Voyager to the Arctic Ocean. 

“ ft was not till the boats returned from the pursuit of these whales, 
that the whites saw their ship in bloody possession of the savages en- 
rolled among the crew.” 

Newspaper Account of the Taking and 
Retaking of the Whale-ship ITobomack. 

“ It is generally well known that out of the crews of Whaling vessels 
(American) few ever return in the ships on board of which they 
departed.” Cruise in a Whale Boat. 

“ Suddenly a mighty mass emerged from the water, and shot up per- 
pendicularly into the air. It was the whale.” 

Miriam Coffin , or the Whale Fisherman. 

“ The Whale is harpooned to be sure ; but bethink you, how you 
would manage a powerful unbroken colt, with the mere appliance of a 
rope tied to the root of his tail.” 

A Chapter on Whaling in Ribs and Trucks. 

“On one occasion I saw two of these monsters (whales) probably 
male and female, slowly swimming, one after the other, within less 
than a stone’s throw of the shore ” (Terra Del Fuego), “ over which the 
beech tree extended its branches.” 

Darwin's Voyage of a Naturalist. 

“ ‘ Stern all ! ’ exclaimed the mate, as upon turning his head, he saw 
the distended jaws of a large Sperm Whale close to the head of the boat, 
threatening it with instant destruction : — ‘ Stern all, for your lives ! ’ ” 

Wharton the Whale Killer. 

“So be cheery, my lads, let your hearts never fail, 

While the bold harpooneer is striking the whale ! ’ ’ 

Nantucket Song. 

“ Oh, the rare old Whale, mid storm and gale, 

In his ocean home will be 
A giant in might, where might is right, 

And King of the boundless sea.” 


Whale Song , 
















/ <0 L ^ 



. ; 




<£ c - <- 










- 










B 


■ 

























































































































' 


















g 

























^*8 




























I I 










H 



